Man raped woman, killed her and her brother in 1990, officials say. Now, he’s charged

A recent acquaintance was invited to a siblings’ apartment in 1990, then he raped the sister and stabbed her and her brother to death before fleeing, Georgia officials say.

The case went cold for decades.

But now, DNA evidence has led to the indictment of 55-year-old Kenneth Perry in connection with the deaths of 43-year-old Pamela Sumpter and 46-year-old John Sumpter, the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office said in a June 26 news release.

The public defender’s office declined to comment on the case.

On July 15, 1990, John Sumpter brought a new acquaintance, later identified as Perry, to the Stone Mountain apartment he shared with his sister, officials said.

Perry is accused of assaulting the sister and stabbing both siblings.

John Sumpter was dead by the time police arrived, but his sister made it to the neighbor’s apartment and gave police a description of her attacker, according to investigators.

She said she didn’t know much about him, but she knew he was from Detroit.

Medical professionals collected a rape kit before she died at a hospital three weeks later, and any leads dried up.

In November 2022, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation submitted DNA from the kit to check for matches in other law enforcement databases.

No matches came up in the state, but investigators said they secured a federal grant to broaden the search to the national level. In February 2024, DNA from the kit matched with DNA from a sexual assault case out of Detroit from 1992, officials said.

In that case, a woman reported that her ex-boyfriend, Kenneth Perry, had assaulted her, but the case wasn’t prosecuted, according to the district attorney’s office.

In April, investigators said they sent DNA from Sumpter’s rape kit to Othram, a private lab based in Texas, for genealogical sequencing and found that Perry may be related to the DNA from the kit.

Detectives learned a man with the same name and birthdate as Perry was living in Loganville, Georgia, only about a 14-mile drive from where the siblings were found dead 34 years ago, officials said.

Investigators said they took a DNA sample from Perry on June 6 to compare it to the sample taken from 1990, and it came back as a match.

A grand jury indicted him June 25 on 14 charges that included two counts of malice murder, two counts of felony murder, rape, four counts of aggravated assault, two counts of aggravated battery, two counts of possession of a knife during the commission of a felony and theft by taking, court records show.

DeKalb County is part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

This story was originally published June 27, 2024 at 11:09 AM with the headline "Man raped woman, killed her and her brother in 1990, officials say. Now, he’s charged."