Elia Banderas

In the heart of downtown Atlanta, the iconic cylindrical tower of the Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel was a place of work for Elia Banderas, a 31-year-old mother of three. As a maid, she moved through the hotel's many rooms, ensuring guests experienced the luxury and comfort the hotel promised. But in the final days of 1995, her workplace became the scene of a brutal crime that cut her life short and left her family grappling with a devastating loss.

On Saturday, December 30, 1995, Elia was working her shift, just a few hours in, when she was viciously attacked. Guests who had rented room 6010 returned in the middle of the day to find a horrific scene. Elia Banderas had been severely beaten and strangled to death. Her body was found between the two beds in the room. Police believe the killer used the room's landline telephone receiver as a weapon. The attack was sudden and violent, leaving a loving partner and three children without a mother. Speaking through a translator after the murder, her partner, Cesar, tearfully told reporters, "Whoever did this should think about what they've done. He killed a mother and left three children alone." After a service for family and friends in Sandy Springs, Georgia, Elia's body was taken to Mexico City, where her parents lived, to be buried.

The Atlanta Police Department launched an immediate and intensive investigation. The city was on edge, as the brutal homicide occurred in one of its most recognizable landmarks. The case grew even more alarming approximately two months later. On February 16, 1996, a guest at the very same hotel, 56-year-old Pauline Cerasoli, was found in her room, 6414, having been subjected to a strikingly similar attack. Cerasoli was badly beaten and strangled, sustaining severe head trauma that left her in a coma. She would remain in a care facility for nearly 15 years before dying from her injuries in 2011, her death officially ruled a homicide.

Investigators noted the similarities in the two cases: both women were attacked in broad daylight inside a room at the Westin, both were beaten and strangled, and robbery did not appear to be a motive in either crime. Police released a computer composite sketch of a suspect in Elia's murder. This led them to question a man named Sonny James Hamilton, a 23-year-old construction worker from South Carolina. Hamilton resembled the sketch and had a history at the hotel; in 1993, he was convicted of battery after chasing two female guests and shutting off power to ten elevators. While detained on a probation violation in March 1996, Hamilton submitted to a polygraph test, which he reportedly passed, and provided hair and blood samples. Though he told the press he was cleared, the Atlanta police chief at the time stated he had not been definitively ruled out as a suspect.

The years have turned into decades, and the murder of Elia Banderas has become a cold case. The terror that gripped the downtown hotel in the winter of 1995-96 has faded from public memory, but for Elia's children and loved ones, the pain and the quest for answers are permanent. The case, along with the subsequent attack on Pauline Cerasoli, raises troubling questions about a violent predator who seemed to operate with impunity in a high-traffic, secure location.

As of June 2026, Elia Banderas's homicide remains on the Atlanta Police Department's list of unsolved cold cases. Investigators still hope that someone, somewhere, holds the piece of information that could finally bring a resolution to this decades-old murder. The hotel offered a $10,000 reward in 1996, but it is unclear if that offer still stands. Anyone with information regarding the murder of Elia Banderas is urged to contact Crime Stoppers Atlanta at 404-577-TIPS (8477).