DNA from a decades-old rape file linked a Georgia man to the fatal stabbing of a woman and her brother in their suburban Atlanta apartment in 1990, officials said Wednesday.
Kenneth Perry, 55, was charged with multiple counts of malice murder, aggravated assault and other crimes in the deaths of Pamela Sumpter, 43, and John Sumpter, 46, the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office said.
Perry was also accused of raping Pamela Sumpter, the prosecutor’s office said.
Perry was arrested this month and charged Tuesday, court documents show.
He is accused of attacking the brother and sister on July 15, 1990, at their home in Stone Mountain, about 17 miles (27 kilometers) northeast of downtown Atlanta, after John Sumpter brought the man to their apartment, the news release said.
Pamela Sumpter survived the attack and was hospitalized, the DA said in a news release. In an interview with authorities, she gave a detailed description of Perry and described him as an acquaintance of her brother, about whom she knew little, the news release said.
While she was in the hospital, medical officials collected a rape kit containing the attacker’s DNA, the prosecutor’s office said. Pamela Sumpter died from her injuries on August 5, 1990 and the case went cold.
This year, a sample from the kit uploaded to a national database matched DNA from an unprosecuted sexual assault in Michigan in 1992, the prosecutor’s office said. The victim identified the suspect in that case as Perry, her ex-boyfriend.
Detroit police investigated the attack in 1992, but a judge denied a warrant in the case due to insufficient evidence, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County District Attorney’s Office said in an email.
She said the case was reopened after Georgia authorities contacted the state Attorney General’s Office and is now being investigated through the Detroit Sexual Assault Kit Project, an initiative launched in 2009 after more than 11,000 untested kits were discovered in a Detroit police storage facility.
It was unclear why the case was not prosecuted. A spokesman for the district attorney referred NBC News to the district attorney’s office in Wayne County, Michigan, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After a genetic genealogy company linked DNA from Pamela Sumpter’s rape kit to a “family network that could include Perry,” authorities arrested him and compared his DNA directly to material from the kit, the prosecutor’s office said.
On June 20, authorities discovered the samples matched, the press release said.
Perry is being held without bond in the DeKalb County Jail, jail records show.
In a motion filed Monday requesting that a reasonable bond be set for possible release pending trial, an attorney for Perry said he poses no significant threat or risk of obstruction of justice.
The lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
