After 30 years, rape survivor’s testimony leads to sentence in Charlotte cold case
A Charlotte rape case from 1994 has ended with life in prison after a two-week trial.
James Ingersoll’s victim is now in her 70s. She bravely testified in the Mecklenburg County Courthouse this week after 30 years of waiting, District Attorney Spencer Merriweather said in a news release.
Ingersoll, now 53, came in through the unlocked backdoor at about 1 a.m. on June 17, 1994. He didn’t know the sleeping woman inside, prosecutors say, but he attacked her with a weapon to her neck. She jumped out the window and called for help from a friend’s house across the street.
The semen collected during her sexual assault examination didn’t lead to answers until 2022, when DNA testing broke the case.
Ingersoll was arrested in 2023. A jury found him guilty of first-degree rape and first-degree burglary, and Superior Court Judge Craig Collins sentenced him to life in prison on Thursday.
