From the HERE City National Desk
DURHAM, N.C. — A Durham County jury on Friday convicted a 33-year-old man on all four charges in the 2012 killing of a 19-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill sophomore, more than 14 years after she was found fatally beaten inside the apartment she rented off campus. The counts were first-degree murder, rape, sexual offense and burglary.
The court ordered him to spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole on the murder count. The judge added consecutive terms on the other three convictions, including 240 to 348 months each for the rape and sexual offense counts and 64 to 89 months for burglary. He is appealing.
The student was killed in September 2012. Investigators went nine years without an arrest until 2021, when the man was stopped on suspicion of drunk driving and gave a DNA sample that prosecutors said matched evidence from the apartment.
At trial, the state called close to two dozen witnesses, among them crime scene technicians, police officers and a forensic scientist from the state crime lab. Experts told jurors his fingerprints and a palm print were on a wine bottle in the apartment, and that his DNA turned up on the victim, on a note scrawled on a fast-food bag and on a bloodied rum bottle investigators believe was the weapon. An autopsy found severe skull fractures along with wounds to her face, head, arms and legs.
The defense put on no witnesses, and the defendant did not testify. His lawyers argued investigators fixed on him too early, pointed to areas of the apartment police never searched and to possible blood evidence that was later lost, and suggested he had had a consensual encounter with the student days before she died. Jurors deliberated about six hours across two days before returning the verdict.
Section: More Washington DC crime news
Filed under: Washington DC Crime News
