Dead man charged in cold-case sex assault near Ballantyne in south Charlotte, cops say
Police on Friday said they charged a convict who died in 2014 in connection with the 1993 sexual assault of a woman near Ballantyne in south Charlotte.
An armed assailant assaulted the victim as she gardened alone on a Saturday afternoon at her church near the 13500 block of Lancaster Highway, according to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department news release Friday night. The woman was 37 at the time, police said.
The location is between Pineville and Ballantyne.
“During the course of the preliminary investigation, the victim was treated at the hospital and a sexual assault kit was completed,” police said in the release.
Recent additional testing matched DNA with N.C. convict Johnnie Lee Gurley, who was 51 years old in 1993, according to CMPD.
Gurley was convicted in 1973 for a 1972 rape and kidnapping in Jacksonville, N.C., and was paroled in 1992, according to Friday’s news release. Gurley returned to prison after his parole was revoked two years later, police said.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.
This story was originally published December 7, 2019 at 6:58 AM.