Officials announced on Wednesday that a Georgia man was connected to the 1990 fatal stabbings of a woman and her brother in their suburban Atlanta apartment through DNA from a decades-old rape kit.
According to the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, Kenneth Perry, 55, was charged with many charges of malice murder, aggravated assault, and other offenses in connection with the murders of Pamela Sumpter, 43, and John Sumpter, 46.
Perry was additionally accused by the prosecutor’s office of raping Pamela Sumpter. According to court documents, Perry was detained this month and was charged on Tuesday.
According to the announcement, on July 15, 1990, in Stone Mountain, about 17 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta, he is accused of attacking the siblings at their residence after John Sumpter brought the man to their apartment.
According to a press release from the DA, Pamela Sumpter was hospitalized after surviving the attack. According to the statement, she gave a thorough description of Perry in an interview with the authorities, describing him as a relative of her brother that she knew very little about.
According to the prosecutor’s office, while the victim was in the hospital, medical staff gathered a rape kit containing the attacker’s DNA. On August 5, 1990, Pamela Sumpter passed away from her wounds, and the matter was closed.
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According to the prosecutor’s office, a sample from the kit that was uploaded to a national database earlier this year matched DNA from a 1992 sexual assault that went unpunished in Michigan. In that instance, the victim named Perry, her ex-boyfriend, as the culprit.
Perry was detained by the authorities and his DNA was directly compared to the samples taken from Pamela Sumpter’s rape kit after a genetic genealogy company connected DNA from the kit to a “family network that could include” Perry, according to the prosecutor’s office.
According to the news release, officials discovered the samples matched on June 20.
According to facility records, Perry is being held without bond at the DeKalb County Jail. Perry’s attorney stated that his client does not constitute a serious threat or risk of obstructing justice in a motion submitted on Monday, requesting that a reasonable bond be established for potential pretrial release.
