Rapist headed to prison 40 years after attacking a Charlotte woman in her apartment
DNA evidence linked Richard Wendell Jones to the 1982 rape of a Charlotte woman. The evidence and her testimony will likely keep him locked up for the rest of his life.
A jury on March 18 found Jones, 61, guilty of two counts of first-degree rape, two counts of first-degree sex offense, first-degree kidnapping, and first-degree burglary, according to a news release from the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s office on Tuesday. Jury deliberations lasted less than 90 minutes, the release said.
Judge Jacqueline Grant sentenced Jones to two consecutive life terms in prison, with the possibility of parole in 40 years.
On Feb. 18, 1982, Jones broke into the woman’s apartment through her bathroom window while she was asleep, prosecutors said. He then threatened her with a knife, bound and gagged her by wrapping her head with tape and tied her to the bed. Jones then sexually assaulted her before fleeing with about $7, according to Assistant District Attorney Kristen Northrup.
The woman eventually freed herself and called police. But the case went cold for nearly four decades.
Around 2013 or 2014, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s Sexual Assault Cold Case Unit began to reexamine the case, according to the DA’s office. DNA evidence submitted for testing matched Jones’.
Jones was serving a prison sentence in Georgia at the time on several charges, including for possession of a firearm, attempted armed robbery, false imprisonment, aggravated sodomy, impersonating an officer, and aggravated assault and robbery, public records show.
Officials brought him back to Mecklenburg in 2019.
Cold cases are especially hard to prosecute, Northup told the Observer on Tuesday, because it leaves prosecutors and law enforcement to work with whatever evidence and witnesses remain.
However, the survivor, a retired lab analyst and one of CMPD’s first female detectives who had worked the case in 1982, testified at Jones’ trial, Northrup said.
“And ultimately, we’re really proud that we were able to secure justice for the survivor in this case,” Northrup said.
The Observer could not reach a member of CMPD’s cold case unit.
