DNA from a decades-old rape kit linked a Georgia man to the fatal stabbings 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 charged with raping Pamela Sumpter, the prosecutor’s office said.
Perry was arrested this month and indicted Tuesday, court records show.
He’s accused of attacking the siblings on July 15, 1990, at their home in Stone Mountain, roughly 17 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta, after John Sumpter brought the man to their apartment, according to the release.
Pamela Sumpter survived the attack and was hospitalized, the DA said in a news release. In an interview with authorities, she provided a detailed description of Perry and described him as an acquaintance of her brother’s whom she knew little about, according to the release.
While she was hospitalized, medical officials collected a rape kit with the attacker’s DNA, the prosecutor’s office said. Pamela Sumpter died of her injuries Aug. 5, 1990, and the case went cold.
This year, a sample from the kit that was uploaded to a national database matched DNA from an unprosecuted sexual assault in Michigan in 1992, the prosecutor’s office said. The victim in that case identified the suspect as Perry, her ex-boyfriend.
The Detroit Police Department investigated the assault in 1992, but a judge denied a warrant in the case because of insufficient evidence, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said in an email.
She said the case was reopened after authorities from Georgia contacted the prosecutor’s office and is now being investigated under the Detroit Sexual Assault Kit Project, an effort that began in 2009 after more than 11,000 untested kits were discovered in a storage room at the Detroit Police Department.
It wasn’t clear why the case wasn’t prosecuted. A spokesperson for the district attorney referred NBC News to the prosecutor’s office in Wayne County, Michigan, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
After a genetic genealogy firm linked DNA from Pamela Sumpter’s rape kit to a “family network that could include” Perry, authorities arrested him and directly compared his DNA to the material collected from the kit, the prosecutor’s office said.
On June 20, authorities learned the samples matched, the news release says.
Perry is being held without bond at the DeKalb County Jail, facility records show.
In a motion filed Monday asking that a reasonable bond be set for possible pretrial release, a lawyer for Perry said he poses no significant threat or risk of obstructing justice.
The lawyer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Tim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.
