38 years later, NC man charged with rape and attempted murder of Missouri teen
DNA travels. From 1984 to the present, and from a college town in the center of the country east to the shores of Lake Norman.
Thirty-eight years ago and almost 850 miles away, a 17-year-old was kidnapped during a nighttime walk to work in Columbia, Mo. The victim was driven down a dead-end road where the abductor parked his car then raped the teenager at knife point. The attacker cut his victim’s throat and tossed the body into a nearby creek. There, the teen lay still in the water before going for help after the car drove off.
On Thursday, Columbia police say they knocked on the victim’s door to announce an arrest in the case. Based on the work of multiple law enforcement agencies in two states, James Frederick Wilson was behind bars at the Iredell County Jail, charged with rape and first-degree assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the March 24, 1984, attack.
The 59-year-old Mooresville resident was being held on a $1 million bond. Mooresville police say Wilson moved to Iredell County in 2018 and has no criminal record in North Carolina. Soon, however, he will be heading west.
The events leading to Wilson’s arrest, which were first reported by The Columbia Missourian, actually began on the night of the attack when the staff of the University of Missouri Hospital in Columbia collected a rape kit from the victim.
Subsequent advances in DNA testing have revolutionized police handling of cold cases. So when Columbia police Detective Renee Wilbarger reopened the file of the unsolved attack in 2020, one of her first moves was visiting several DNA labs in hopes of finding a genetic profile of the suspect. No luck.
A month ago, the course and speed of the cold case investigation dramatically changed. Wilbarger heard from another lab, and this one had news: A genealogical architect in Washington who was building a family tree for a client had hit on a possible match for the missing rape suspect. The link turned out to be a relative of Wilson.
The investigation now straddled two time zones. Mooresville police detectives, who partnered with agents from the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation, “covertly obtained” a DNA sample from Wilson. A police spokeswoman on Friday declined to provide details.
Some of the DNA samples collected here were sent to the police lab in Columbia, about two hours west of St. Louis, and compared to the hospital rape kit. After 38 years and 217 days, police finally had a match.
On Thursday, Columbia detectives, Mooresville police and SBI agents all took part in the raid at Wilson’s home on Ashton Park Drive.
“It was truly a team effort to break this case,” Mooresville police Chief Ron Campurciani said in a Friday statement to The Charlotte Observer.
During a Thursday press conference in Columbia, Police Chief Geoff Jones talked of how best to describe the target of a long-ago attack on a teenager.
“We use the word ‘victim’ as a police term in reports,” he said, according to the Missourian. “She is a survivor. Thirty-eight years is a long time to carry this burden.”
He added a vow:
“We stand with and behind you,” he said to the survivor. “You are not alone.”
This story was originally published October 28, 2022 at 5:05 PM.
