October 1, 2025 • 29 mins
In Atlanta, the brutal rape and double homicide of siblings left detectives with plenty of evidence but no suspect. For years, the case went cold. Then, a violent crime in Michigan revealed new DNA leads that could finally identify the killer, and deliver long-awaited justice for the Sumpter family while their mother is still alive to see it.
America’s Crime Lab is a true crime podcast about how science solves cold cases, missing persons, and other unsolved cases. Hosted by journalist and clinical psychologist Elin Lantz Lesser, and powered by Othram’s forensic DNA lab, the show connects the science to the story, revealing what really happens in the lab and why it matters.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I just remember getting the text from my investigator. I
immediately pick up my phone and I was like, oh
my god, what do we know. She was able to
provide a description of the man because he came into
(00:36):
their home. He ate some food, he had some drinks.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
When someone commits a crime, they inevitably leave little clues
of who they are at the scene. Sometimes it's a fingerprint,
a speck of blood, or a drop of seamen and
while police collect the evidence, a lot of times it
just sits on tested for decades. But now the promise
(01:04):
of new DNA technology has some departments vowing to clear
a backlog of cases, starting with the most violent. This
is America's Crime Lab. I'm Alan Lanzlesser and I'm here
with producer Catherine Finalosa.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Allen, I want to tell you about a case from
nineteen ninety. It happened in Stone Mountain, Georgia, which is
about a half hour east of Atlanta. On July fifteenth,
nineteen ninety, a nine to one one call is made
a little after four in the morning, and a neighbor
(01:52):
calls saying that a woman has shown up at their
door and she's injured, pretty severely injured. She's standing in
just a blood soaked T shirt. This woman is Pamela
Sumpter and she lives in a neighboring apartment. She says
(02:14):
she's been stabbed and she's been raped.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
So the neighbors start attending to her, trying to stop
the bleeding. The police arrive, and when they go to
Pamela's apartment, which she shared with her brother John, they
find John dead. He's lying on the floor and a
(02:38):
couch has been placed on top of his body. Oh,
it's just a brutal, brutal crime scene.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
So he's died and she Pamela, I mean, do we
know where she was stabbed?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
She has multiple stab wounds. But before she's taken to
the hospital, she's actually able to give a description of
the man who attacked her to the police. What she
says is that she'd never met him before. Her brother
had brought him home the night before, and her brother
(03:20):
was gay, but it wasn't like him to bring men
home to their apartment, so that was odd. She says.
The guy's name was maybe al or Eddie, she can't
really remember. She did remember that he had said he
had recently moved to the area. He was about I
(03:42):
don't know, five seven or five nine. He was dark skinned,
and he was built like a bodybuilder like sort of
very like big muscles, a thick build.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Somehow, the way you're telling me this case, I feel
like I have my little Sherlock cap on. I'm ready
to solve this case because this is this is horrible.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Oh, it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Also, it's really good that they were able to talk
to Pamela right away, because it's so critical to talk
to the victim and get as much information as you
can because that's your best bet.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Well, and it's amazing that Pamela, considering her injuries, is
even able to like have a clear head and remember
these details and share.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Them bravery even to have the wherewithal to.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Do that exactly. And so she's able to tell police
that this guy, el or Eddie had come home with
her brother. They had had some drinks and ate food
at the apartment, and then her brother John and the
man decide to head out for the night and they
say they're going to drive around Atlanta, maybe hit up
(05:08):
some clubs, and they invite Pamela to come with them,
but she says no, you guys go, I need to
get up early for work. So she stays home. The
men leave, and Pamela stays up a little bit. She's
sitting on the couch watching TV when her brother and
this guy return. It's been maybe a couple hours and
(05:31):
it's about eleven o'clock at night. The three of them
talk for a little bit, but there's something about this
guy that makes Pamela uncomfortable, and she can't put her
finger on it, but she just feels really uneasy around him.
So she excuses herself and she says she's going to
bid and her bedroom is on the second floor of
(05:52):
the apartment, so she goes upstairs and she leaves John
and this guy downstairs in the room in front of
the TV. Okay, so Pamela goes upstairs to go to bed,
and at some point we don't know exactly what time,
but Pamela wakes up to find this man standing completely
(06:14):
naked over her bed. He's holding a knife in his hand.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Pamela is obviously completely startled and confused, and she asks
the man, where is my brother? This guy says he's
downstairs sleeping, and then this man attacks Pamela. So those
are the details that she's able to tell police. At
(06:42):
this point, she's rushed to the hospital and into emergency
surgery to repair the stab wounds. She has abdominal surgery.
Her shoulder is dislocated, she's in a rough way, and
they do a rape kit. Now, after surgery, she wakes up,
she's able to talk to her family, she's able to
(07:04):
actually talk to the police again, but then she needs
to be ventilated due to the extensiveness of her injuries,
and she never regains consciousness. So Pamela dies two weeks
later in the hospital.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
No, that's so sad.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
The night of the attack, the police actually spend about
six hours in Pamela and John's apartment collecting evidence and
just examining the whole crime scene. And I was curious
about what they found, so I called Shannon Hotter, she's
a senior assistant District Attorney at the DeKalb County DA's office.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
As detectives started working their way through the home, what
they found was a really, really awful scene. The phone
lines had been cut throughout the home. They found Pamela's
bedroom and disarray, blood soaked sheets, blood on her bedroom floor.
John had also been stabbed, and the sofa in the
(08:15):
living room had been placed over his body, so it
was covering his head and upper torso, so they had
to remove the sofa off of his body.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
It's really haunting. I mean, there's blood everywhere.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
That sounds horrific, and it also sounds like there's a
lot of evidence for detectives to collect.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
The investigators, i mean, even back then, did a tremendous job.
They collected the sheets from Pamela's bed, They collected biological
samples from suspected blood.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
In the kitchen, there's definitely signs that, as Pamela said
that they had had dinner, and the dishes have not
been washed yet. They're able to take fingerprints from the plates.
They also dust the bathroom doorknob and they're able to
get fingerprints from that.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
They were able to collect the knife that was near
John's body that was the suspected murder weapon. They took
hundreds of pictures. They just spent a lot of time
meticulously going through the scene to try to collect or
retain anything that might lead to the identity of this person.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
This happened in nineteen ninety, so the FBI's Crime Database
CODIS isn't operating yet, right.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, I don't think that was really available to states
until the late nineties.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So I mean, what options do they have for testing
the evidence?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah, I was curious about that too.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
What they could do in nineteen ninety was if they
were able to generate a suspect, they could do a
direct comparison of that person's DNA to any biological samples
from the crime scene that yielded DNA. So they would
want to retain any potential samples just in case they
(10:16):
did develop a suspect.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
It's just interesting to me that when you started telling
this story, I, for some reason, because I know nothing
about this, immediately jumped to I wonder if Pamela was
involved and has some kind of faked injury. And I
just think that's so messed up of me in a
way to immediately question the victim. I don't even know
(10:41):
why I'm sharing that, but it's interesting how it's so
easy to blame the victim so quickly. And I'm kind
of noticing that in myself even and that then she
died well.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
And I think also you can see how complicated exactamining
a crime scene is when you don't really know who's
involved and what the backstories are. That you have to
like put your assumptions aside in a way, right, like
(11:14):
not let any judgment creep into your thought pattern and
really just like try and focus on the facts that
you have in front of you, because I mean, clearly
a lot of cases, right the prime suspect turns out
to be not involved at all.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
There is such a thing as coincidence too. Things can
just happen, and yeah, you have to try to set
the bias on the table. And also you were saying
being an investigator in the situation, walking in having no
context and there's blood everywhere. Two people have died or
(12:00):
at least one has died so far, and one is
severely injured.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
It's like, how terrifying.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And you're just questioning every single person and everything that's happening.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
If you're to believe Pamela, there's another person who was
in that apartment that evening who is now mi Ia.
(12:39):
So the police question everyone neighbors, friends, family, and they're
trying to figure out, like did anybody hear anything? Did
Pamela or John mention this man to any friends or family?
They really can't find out much about him. They're just
going on maybe his name is Eddie or al. I
(13:00):
think friends mentioned like, oh yeah, maybe he had been
at a party that Pamela and John had been to
a week or two before. But even that was a
little like, you know, questionable recollection. So they're kind of stuck.
So it's great that they collected the DNA, but there's
nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, I can imagine that would have been so frustrating.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
So the case with no viable leads was really shelved.
There were a lot of other cases coming in. The
detective started working those, and without any tips or leads
coming in, the case wasn't really ever looked back at again.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So this rape kit just sits untested.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I have a little glimmery feeling though, that that rape
kit is going to come into play later on.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Yes, now we're going to jump ahead to twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Two things sort of happen almost simultaneously.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
So first, the federal government sets aside money for states
to test rape kits, and it's through something called the
Sexual Assault Kit Initiative. The goal is to clear out
a backlog of untested rape kits. And then something else happens.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Right around that same time, our office was putting together
a cold case task force, and we were looking specifically
at unsolved homicides here into Cab County that might have
DNA evidence that we could use and hopefully develop a suspect.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Shannon Hotter and her team start looking through their unsolved.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Cases, so we started with cases that involve female victims,
stabbings and sexual assaults. Because of the personal nature of
those types of attacks, you are just more likely to
have DNA evidence. I believe the GBI sent off over
(15:14):
seven hundred rape kits, and Pamela Sumter's case was one
of the ones that really stuck out to us.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
It makes me angry the fact that there are these
seven hundred rape kits just sitting there, and that's just
at one agency, which means that when you look at
the whole country, there's probably hundreds of thousands of untested kits.
I mean, when you hear about rape kits, you just
assume that at the very least they're all tested to
some degree.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Yeah, I agree, and I mean I guess the other
way to look at it is back at the time,
the only way they could test a rape kit is
if they had a suspect in mind, but I mean,
thank god they didn't just toss the rape kit out
at some point. It's kind of amazing that they actually
kept it.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
All these years. That's true.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
So Pamela's rape kit fits all the criteria for testing now,
and Shannon Hotter sends the kit off to a lab.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
A number of swabs were taken in Pamela's rape kit,
but it was the vaginal swab from that rape kit
that yielded the DNA profile, and it was from Semen.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
But when they load that profile into the state's crime database,
which is, you know, basically a database full of DNA
from known criminals or previous violent crimes.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
We had no hits whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
I honestly thought you were going to say, now they
have a suspect. That must have been incredibly disappointing.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Actually she's not disappointed.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
So I hate to say that it was exciting. Here
we have our opportunity to deploy the new technique that
has been utilized around the country to solve hundreds of cases,
and we have found a case where we can apply
(17:11):
it ourselves.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Shannon Hotter is talking about genetic genealogy. Now, since there
were no hits in George's crime database. She wants to
use the DNA and build out a family tree, but
first they have to upload the profile to codis.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
To see if the DNA profile matches a different crime
in another state.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, exactly. So the profile is submitted.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And then we got a hit. It was a hit
to another unsolved case in Michigan. Then I'm really excited.
Now we have a potential suspect and that really is
the true goal here, to solve this case and to
bring justice to the Sumpter family.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
So let me get this straight. The DNA profile hits
in codis, so they know that the person who raped
Pamela and murdered her and her brother John is tied
to another crime in Michigan, but we still don't know
his identity.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
So the Michigan case was also in the early nineties,
a woman was sexually assaulted, but no one was arrested
in the case. However, at the time police did question
someone and they collected his DNA and then entered that
into CODAS, and Shannon Hotter is like, wait a second,
we're onto something. I mean, this is the first big
(18:37):
break in thirty four years.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
So as soon as we get that potential match notification,
we immediately get in touch with their cold case department
and tell them about this potential lead that we now
have in both of our cases, and they get to
work trying to pull this file for us. So they
(19:03):
had to go back to their archives. They told us
ahead of time, listen, manage your expectations. We had a
huge flood in our archives. More than half of our
old cases have been destroyed. But we will look. And
about two weeks later we get the call that they
(19:23):
have found it. It is intact. We couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
So, Catherine, what do we know about the Michigan case?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
A woman reported that her ex boyfriend sexually assaulted her
and in the file she gives his name and birth date.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Wait, an ex boyfriend, so that means they should have
his identity?
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Yes, and back in Michigan, the police had actually brought
this guy in for questioning, which is why his DNA
was on file.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
There was a case note that they had interviewed him,
that he had said it was consensual, and because it
was what they said he said, she said, kind of
situation they chose not to prosecute at that time.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Oh my god, that's good.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
They have a name. Who knows how many crimes this
guy has potentially committed. I mean it sounds like he
probably at least murdered two people. And the one time
where someone can actually come forward and say it's my
ex boyfriend.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
I know exactly who he is.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, to not prosecute, it's just just think about all
the other potential victims because of that.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
So it turns out that another big part of the
investigation is happening simultaneously. Earlier, Shannon Hotter said she was
watching other agencies solt cold cases using forensic genetic genealogy
and she wanted to try it. So while she was
waiting for Michigan to go through their archives and find
their old case file, she decides to reach out to
(21:08):
David Middleman at AUTHRM.
Speaker 6 (21:11):
We felt very confident if plenty of DNA, the quality
was fine, and what we ended up doing is we
built a DNA profile for the unknown contributor to this
rape kit, and then after we did that, we started
doing forensic genetic genealogy. We then went through the process
of building out family trees and developing hypothesis, and.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
At the same time, Shannon gets the name from Michigan.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
When we get that file, we learn that the victim
in that case reported a Kenneth Perry. We found a
Kenneth Perry living in Georgia. We've run as criminal history.
We see that he used to live in Michigan and
actually even has a fences out of Michigan. We can
(22:00):
also place him into keb County. This could be our person.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
And Authorroom keeps building the family tree.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
They did the ancestry and they were able to say
that our crime scene evidence was from the family tree
of this Kenneth Perry living in Georgia. We take our
known suspect now and run his fingerprints against our crime
scene evidence, and we were able to develop matches to
(22:34):
three different Layton lifts, two from a plate that was
in the kitchen at the Sumpter's house and one from
a bathroom doorknob in the Sumter's house. And then we
knew we had our guy.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
The DA's office gets a search warrant for Kenneth Perry's
DNA and an arrest warrant, and then they set off
to find him.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Our office then started working with the Sheriff's department, who
has a fugitive unit. The Sheriff's department was able to
get eyes on mister Perry at his home. They then
followed him to a restaurant where he was going to
have lunch with his girlfriend and I believe her grandson.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
So this is a full fledged stakeout.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, law enforcement arrests him inside the restaurant and since
they have a search weren't for his DNA, they get
a mouth swab to confirm his identity.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
You absolutely need to have a confirmation swab, and so
you can tell Durie, you can tell a judge that
this person sitting before you, we have taken their DNA,
we have compared it against the evidence, and we have
a match.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
And the case goes to trial.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Mister Perry chose to testify, and he told one of
the most outraged, disgusting stories I've ever heard as a prosecutor.
Not only did he deny the offenses, but he tried
to flip the script and turn the Sumpters into his attackers.
(24:17):
He indicated that he had been picked up by mister Sumter,
taken back to the Sumpter's house where he was drugged
and then sexually assaulted by John, his sister, and a
third unknown male.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
It just feels so so icky to me that he
was trying to portray the victims of his crime as perpetrators. Yeah,
that just even goes beyond.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
In March of twenty twenty five, he was sentenced to
three consecutive life terms plus one hundred years for raping
Pamela Sumpter and murdering her and her brother John.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
But were they able to learn anything else from Kenneth
or discover a motive that led to him murdering two people.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
No, they don't discover a motive, and actually no one
is even sure how they met. But Shannon Hotter was
able to tell Pamela and John's mother herself that the
man who did this to her children was now in prison.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
She honestly said she could only believe that it was
the work of God. It was the hand of God
delivering justice to her to make sure that she saw
the person responsible convicted and tried and held accountable for
what he had done to her family and Ailen.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Their mother was weeks away from her one hundredth birthday
when Kenneth Perry was convicted.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
It's like she was meant to know the truth.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
At ninety nine, had decided that that was never going
to happen, and then one day we show up at
her Dorset step. She didn't even realize we were looking
into the case. It was beautiful, It was really beautiful
to be able to do that for this family.
Speaker 7 (26:10):
I do believe that these families get stuck at that
moment where they lost their loved one, and that's what
I love about this technology. It reduces that uncertainty and
it allows you to figure out exactly who was at
that crime scene, and then you can take that piece
of information and build an entire case and bring that
(26:33):
certainty and closure.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
It sounds kind of strange to say that a crime
where there's been such a horrible rape and double murder
that you come to an ending where there is some hope.
I mean, solving it doesn't bring back Pamela and John.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
No, but I know what you mean, and I think
that's what Kristin Middleman is saying. You can't go back
in time and prevent what happened, but now maybe you
can prevent it from happening again.
Speaker 8 (27:05):
To live in a world where perpetrators are caught the
first time, and you're never going to stop people from
committing crimes, but to prevent that second and third and
fourth and fifth attack, especially in sexual crimes where it's
they're repetitive right when people know that even if they
leave trace amounts of DNA, you're still going to get caught.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
And that makes me think of the Idaho student murders.
You know, by tracking the killer with his own DNA
in real time, it meant that he was arrested before
he could commit another crime.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
It is fascinating to think about how this technology could
change the way crimes are investigated right from the start
and maybe help keep cases from ever going cold.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Cold case work is a series of roller coaster emotions.
You think you have DNA evidence, but when you go
to DCAB property room, it can't be located because it's
so old and it's been misplaced where a witness has died.
Just there's so much heartache and disappointment in cold case work.
(28:20):
But with this case, everything panned out, everything went right,
and it was the most incredible experience of my career.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Next time, on America's Crime Lab, it was treated as
this sort of insolvable crime.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
It would always be her word against his.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
So many times we've identified a perpetrator and they're a
taxi driver at the airport, the barista that handed you
your coffee this morning, the it person that came to
your office or your house.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
It's terrifying.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope.
Erica Lance is our story editor and sound design is
by David Woji. Our producing team is Catherine Fedalosa, Emily
Foreman and Jessica Albert. Our Executive producers are Kate Osborne,
Mangesh Hattigadour and David and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart
(29:26):
Katrina Norville and Ali Perry.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Special thanks to Connell.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Byrne, Will Pearson, Kerrie Lieberman, Nikki Etour, Nathan Etowski, John Burbank,
and the entire team at Authrum.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
I'm Alan Lance Lesser. Thanks for listening.
I just remember getting the text from my investigator. I
immediately pick up my phone and I was like, oh
my god, what do we know. She was able to
provide a description of the man because he came into
(00:36):
their home. He ate some food, he had some drinks.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
When someone commits a crime, they inevitably leave little clues
of who they are at the scene. Sometimes it's a fingerprint,
a speck of blood, or a drop of seamen and
while police collect the evidence, a lot of times it
just sits on tested for decades. But now the promise
(01:04):
of new DNA technology has some departments vowing to clear
a backlog of cases, starting with the most violent. This
is America's Crime Lab. I'm Alan Lanzlesser and I'm here
with producer Catherine Finalosa.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Allen, I want to tell you about a case from
nineteen ninety. It happened in Stone Mountain, Georgia, which is
about a half hour east of Atlanta. On July fifteenth,
nineteen ninety, a nine to one one call is made
a little after four in the morning, and a neighbor
(01:52):
calls saying that a woman has shown up at their
door and she's injured, pretty severely injured. She's standing in
just a blood soaked T shirt. This woman is Pamela
Sumpter and she lives in a neighboring apartment. She says
(02:14):
she's been stabbed and she's been raped.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
So the neighbors start attending to her, trying to stop
the bleeding. The police arrive, and when they go to
Pamela's apartment, which she shared with her brother John, they
find John dead. He's lying on the floor and a
(02:38):
couch has been placed on top of his body. Oh,
it's just a brutal, brutal crime scene.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
So he's died and she Pamela, I mean, do we
know where she was stabbed?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
She has multiple stab wounds. But before she's taken to
the hospital, she's actually able to give a description of
the man who attacked her to the police. What she
says is that she'd never met him before. Her brother
had brought him home the night before, and her brother
(03:20):
was gay, but it wasn't like him to bring men
home to their apartment, so that was odd. She says.
The guy's name was maybe al or Eddie, she can't
really remember. She did remember that he had said he
had recently moved to the area. He was about I
(03:42):
don't know, five seven or five nine. He was dark skinned,
and he was built like a bodybuilder like sort of
very like big muscles, a thick build.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Somehow, the way you're telling me this case, I feel
like I have my little Sherlock cap on. I'm ready
to solve this case because this is this is horrible.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Oh, it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Also, it's really good that they were able to talk
to Pamela right away, because it's so critical to talk
to the victim and get as much information as you
can because that's your best bet.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Well, and it's amazing that Pamela, considering her injuries, is
even able to like have a clear head and remember
these details and share.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Them bravery even to have the wherewithal to.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Do that exactly. And so she's able to tell police
that this guy, el or Eddie had come home with
her brother. They had had some drinks and ate food
at the apartment, and then her brother John and the
man decide to head out for the night and they
say they're going to drive around Atlanta, maybe hit up
(05:08):
some clubs, and they invite Pamela to come with them,
but she says no, you guys go, I need to
get up early for work. So she stays home. The
men leave, and Pamela stays up a little bit. She's
sitting on the couch watching TV when her brother and
this guy return. It's been maybe a couple hours and
(05:31):
it's about eleven o'clock at night. The three of them
talk for a little bit, but there's something about this
guy that makes Pamela uncomfortable, and she can't put her
finger on it, but she just feels really uneasy around him.
So she excuses herself and she says she's going to
bid and her bedroom is on the second floor of
(05:52):
the apartment, so she goes upstairs and she leaves John
and this guy downstairs in the room in front of
the TV. Okay, so Pamela goes upstairs to go to bed,
and at some point we don't know exactly what time,
but Pamela wakes up to find this man standing completely
(06:14):
naked over her bed. He's holding a knife in his hand.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Pamela is obviously completely startled and confused, and she asks
the man, where is my brother? This guy says he's
downstairs sleeping, and then this man attacks Pamela. So those
are the details that she's able to tell police. At
(06:42):
this point, she's rushed to the hospital and into emergency
surgery to repair the stab wounds. She has abdominal surgery.
Her shoulder is dislocated, she's in a rough way, and
they do a rape kit. Now, after surgery, she wakes up,
she's able to talk to her family, she's able to
(07:04):
actually talk to the police again, but then she needs
to be ventilated due to the extensiveness of her injuries,
and she never regains consciousness. So Pamela dies two weeks
later in the hospital.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
No, that's so sad.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
The night of the attack, the police actually spend about
six hours in Pamela and John's apartment collecting evidence and
just examining the whole crime scene. And I was curious
about what they found, so I called Shannon Hotter, she's
a senior assistant District Attorney at the DeKalb County DA's office.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
As detectives started working their way through the home, what
they found was a really, really awful scene. The phone
lines had been cut throughout the home. They found Pamela's
bedroom and disarray, blood soaked sheets, blood on her bedroom floor.
John had also been stabbed, and the sofa in the
(08:15):
living room had been placed over his body, so it
was covering his head and upper torso, so they had
to remove the sofa off of his body.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
It's really haunting. I mean, there's blood everywhere.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
That sounds horrific, and it also sounds like there's a
lot of evidence for detectives to collect.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
The investigators, i mean, even back then, did a tremendous job.
They collected the sheets from Pamela's bed, They collected biological
samples from suspected blood.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
In the kitchen, there's definitely signs that, as Pamela said
that they had had dinner, and the dishes have not
been washed yet. They're able to take fingerprints from the plates.
They also dust the bathroom doorknob and they're able to
get fingerprints from that.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
They were able to collect the knife that was near
John's body that was the suspected murder weapon. They took
hundreds of pictures. They just spent a lot of time
meticulously going through the scene to try to collect or
retain anything that might lead to the identity of this person.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
This happened in nineteen ninety, so the FBI's Crime Database
CODIS isn't operating yet, right.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, I don't think that was really available to states
until the late nineties.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So I mean, what options do they have for testing
the evidence?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah, I was curious about that too.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
What they could do in nineteen ninety was if they
were able to generate a suspect, they could do a
direct comparison of that person's DNA to any biological samples
from the crime scene that yielded DNA. So they would
want to retain any potential samples just in case they
(10:16):
did develop a suspect.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
It's just interesting to me that when you started telling
this story, I, for some reason, because I know nothing
about this, immediately jumped to I wonder if Pamela was
involved and has some kind of faked injury. And I
just think that's so messed up of me in a
way to immediately question the victim. I don't even know
(10:41):
why I'm sharing that, but it's interesting how it's so
easy to blame the victim so quickly. And I'm kind
of noticing that in myself even and that then she
died well.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
And I think also you can see how complicated exactamining
a crime scene is when you don't really know who's
involved and what the backstories are. That you have to
like put your assumptions aside in a way, right, like
(11:14):
not let any judgment creep into your thought pattern and
really just like try and focus on the facts that
you have in front of you, because I mean, clearly
a lot of cases, right the prime suspect turns out
to be not involved at all.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
There is such a thing as coincidence too. Things can
just happen, and yeah, you have to try to set
the bias on the table. And also you were saying
being an investigator in the situation, walking in having no
context and there's blood everywhere. Two people have died or
(12:00):
at least one has died so far, and one is
severely injured.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
It's like, how terrifying.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And you're just questioning every single person and everything that's happening.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
If you're to believe Pamela, there's another person who was
in that apartment that evening who is now mi Ia.
(12:39):
So the police question everyone neighbors, friends, family, and they're
trying to figure out, like did anybody hear anything? Did
Pamela or John mention this man to any friends or family?
They really can't find out much about him. They're just
going on maybe his name is Eddie or al. I
(13:00):
think friends mentioned like, oh yeah, maybe he had been
at a party that Pamela and John had been to
a week or two before. But even that was a
little like, you know, questionable recollection. So they're kind of stuck.
So it's great that they collected the DNA, but there's
nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, I can imagine that would have been so frustrating.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
So the case with no viable leads was really shelved.
There were a lot of other cases coming in. The
detective started working those, and without any tips or leads
coming in, the case wasn't really ever looked back at again.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So this rape kit just sits untested.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I have a little glimmery feeling though, that that rape
kit is going to come into play later on.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Yes, now we're going to jump ahead to twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Two things sort of happen almost simultaneously.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
So first, the federal government sets aside money for states
to test rape kits, and it's through something called the
Sexual Assault Kit Initiative. The goal is to clear out
a backlog of untested rape kits. And then something else happens.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Right around that same time, our office was putting together
a cold case task force, and we were looking specifically
at unsolved homicides here into Cab County that might have
DNA evidence that we could use and hopefully develop a suspect.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Shannon Hotter and her team start looking through their unsolved.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Cases, so we started with cases that involve female victims,
stabbings and sexual assaults. Because of the personal nature of
those types of attacks, you are just more likely to
have DNA evidence. I believe the GBI sent off over
(15:14):
seven hundred rape kits, and Pamela Sumter's case was one
of the ones that really stuck out to us.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
It makes me angry the fact that there are these
seven hundred rape kits just sitting there, and that's just
at one agency, which means that when you look at
the whole country, there's probably hundreds of thousands of untested kits.
I mean, when you hear about rape kits, you just
assume that at the very least they're all tested to
some degree.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Yeah, I agree, and I mean I guess the other
way to look at it is back at the time,
the only way they could test a rape kit is
if they had a suspect in mind, but I mean,
thank god they didn't just toss the rape kit out
at some point. It's kind of amazing that they actually
kept it.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
All these years. That's true.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
So Pamela's rape kit fits all the criteria for testing now,
and Shannon Hotter sends the kit off to a lab.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
A number of swabs were taken in Pamela's rape kit,
but it was the vaginal swab from that rape kit
that yielded the DNA profile, and it was from Semen.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
But when they load that profile into the state's crime database,
which is, you know, basically a database full of DNA
from known criminals or previous violent crimes.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
We had no hits whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
I honestly thought you were going to say, now they
have a suspect. That must have been incredibly disappointing.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Actually she's not disappointed.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
So I hate to say that it was exciting. Here
we have our opportunity to deploy the new technique that
has been utilized around the country to solve hundreds of cases,
and we have found a case where we can apply
(17:11):
it ourselves.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Shannon Hotter is talking about genetic genealogy. Now, since there
were no hits in George's crime database. She wants to
use the DNA and build out a family tree, but
first they have to upload the profile to codis.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
To see if the DNA profile matches a different crime
in another state.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, exactly. So the profile is submitted.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And then we got a hit. It was a hit
to another unsolved case in Michigan. Then I'm really excited.
Now we have a potential suspect and that really is
the true goal here, to solve this case and to
bring justice to the Sumpter family.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
So let me get this straight. The DNA profile hits
in codis, so they know that the person who raped
Pamela and murdered her and her brother John is tied
to another crime in Michigan, but we still don't know
his identity.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
So the Michigan case was also in the early nineties,
a woman was sexually assaulted, but no one was arrested
in the case. However, at the time police did question
someone and they collected his DNA and then entered that
into CODAS, and Shannon Hotter is like, wait a second,
we're onto something. I mean, this is the first big
(18:37):
break in thirty four years.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
So as soon as we get that potential match notification,
we immediately get in touch with their cold case department
and tell them about this potential lead that we now
have in both of our cases, and they get to
work trying to pull this file for us. So they
(19:03):
had to go back to their archives. They told us
ahead of time, listen, manage your expectations. We had a
huge flood in our archives. More than half of our
old cases have been destroyed. But we will look. And
about two weeks later we get the call that they
(19:23):
have found it. It is intact. We couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
So, Catherine, what do we know about the Michigan case?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
A woman reported that her ex boyfriend sexually assaulted her
and in the file she gives his name and birth date.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Wait, an ex boyfriend, so that means they should have
his identity?
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Yes, and back in Michigan, the police had actually brought
this guy in for questioning, which is why his DNA
was on file.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
There was a case note that they had interviewed him,
that he had said it was consensual, and because it
was what they said he said, she said, kind of
situation they chose not to prosecute at that time.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Oh my god, that's good.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
They have a name. Who knows how many crimes this
guy has potentially committed. I mean it sounds like he
probably at least murdered two people. And the one time
where someone can actually come forward and say it's my
ex boyfriend.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
I know exactly who he is.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, to not prosecute, it's just just think about all
the other potential victims because of that.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
So it turns out that another big part of the
investigation is happening simultaneously. Earlier, Shannon Hotter said she was
watching other agencies solt cold cases using forensic genetic genealogy
and she wanted to try it. So while she was
waiting for Michigan to go through their archives and find
their old case file, she decides to reach out to
(21:08):
David Middleman at AUTHRM.
Speaker 6 (21:11):
We felt very confident if plenty of DNA, the quality
was fine, and what we ended up doing is we
built a DNA profile for the unknown contributor to this
rape kit, and then after we did that, we started
doing forensic genetic genealogy. We then went through the process
of building out family trees and developing hypothesis, and.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
At the same time, Shannon gets the name from Michigan.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
When we get that file, we learn that the victim
in that case reported a Kenneth Perry. We found a
Kenneth Perry living in Georgia. We've run as criminal history.
We see that he used to live in Michigan and
actually even has a fences out of Michigan. We can
(22:00):
also place him into keb County. This could be our person.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
And Authorroom keeps building the family tree.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
They did the ancestry and they were able to say
that our crime scene evidence was from the family tree
of this Kenneth Perry living in Georgia. We take our
known suspect now and run his fingerprints against our crime
scene evidence, and we were able to develop matches to
(22:34):
three different Layton lifts, two from a plate that was
in the kitchen at the Sumpter's house and one from
a bathroom doorknob in the Sumter's house. And then we
knew we had our guy.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
The DA's office gets a search warrant for Kenneth Perry's
DNA and an arrest warrant, and then they set off
to find him.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Our office then started working with the Sheriff's department, who
has a fugitive unit. The Sheriff's department was able to
get eyes on mister Perry at his home. They then
followed him to a restaurant where he was going to
have lunch with his girlfriend and I believe her grandson.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
So this is a full fledged stakeout.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, law enforcement arrests him inside the restaurant and since
they have a search weren't for his DNA, they get
a mouth swab to confirm his identity.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
You absolutely need to have a confirmation swab, and so
you can tell Durie, you can tell a judge that
this person sitting before you, we have taken their DNA,
we have compared it against the evidence, and we have
a match.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
And the case goes to trial.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Mister Perry chose to testify, and he told one of
the most outraged, disgusting stories I've ever heard as a prosecutor.
Not only did he deny the offenses, but he tried
to flip the script and turn the Sumpters into his attackers.
(24:17):
He indicated that he had been picked up by mister Sumter,
taken back to the Sumpter's house where he was drugged
and then sexually assaulted by John, his sister, and a
third unknown male.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
It just feels so so icky to me that he
was trying to portray the victims of his crime as perpetrators. Yeah,
that just even goes beyond.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
In March of twenty twenty five, he was sentenced to
three consecutive life terms plus one hundred years for raping
Pamela Sumpter and murdering her and her brother John.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
But were they able to learn anything else from Kenneth
or discover a motive that led to him murdering two people.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
No, they don't discover a motive, and actually no one
is even sure how they met. But Shannon Hotter was
able to tell Pamela and John's mother herself that the
man who did this to her children was now in prison.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
She honestly said she could only believe that it was
the work of God. It was the hand of God
delivering justice to her to make sure that she saw
the person responsible convicted and tried and held accountable for
what he had done to her family and Ailen.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Their mother was weeks away from her one hundredth birthday
when Kenneth Perry was convicted.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
It's like she was meant to know the truth.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
At ninety nine, had decided that that was never going
to happen, and then one day we show up at
her Dorset step. She didn't even realize we were looking
into the case. It was beautiful, It was really beautiful
to be able to do that for this family.
Speaker 7 (26:10):
I do believe that these families get stuck at that
moment where they lost their loved one, and that's what
I love about this technology. It reduces that uncertainty and
it allows you to figure out exactly who was at
that crime scene, and then you can take that piece
of information and build an entire case and bring that
(26:33):
certainty and closure.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
It sounds kind of strange to say that a crime
where there's been such a horrible rape and double murder
that you come to an ending where there is some hope.
I mean, solving it doesn't bring back Pamela and John.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
No, but I know what you mean, and I think
that's what Kristin Middleman is saying. You can't go back
in time and prevent what happened, but now maybe you
can prevent it from happening again.
Speaker 8 (27:05):
To live in a world where perpetrators are caught the
first time, and you're never going to stop people from
committing crimes, but to prevent that second and third and
fourth and fifth attack, especially in sexual crimes where it's
they're repetitive right when people know that even if they
leave trace amounts of DNA, you're still going to get caught.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
And that makes me think of the Idaho student murders.
You know, by tracking the killer with his own DNA
in real time, it meant that he was arrested before
he could commit another crime.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
It is fascinating to think about how this technology could
change the way crimes are investigated right from the start
and maybe help keep cases from ever going cold.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Cold case work is a series of roller coaster emotions.
You think you have DNA evidence, but when you go
to DCAB property room, it can't be located because it's
so old and it's been misplaced where a witness has died.
Just there's so much heartache and disappointment in cold case work.
(28:20):
But with this case, everything panned out, everything went right,
and it was the most incredible experience of my career.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Next time, on America's Crime Lab, it was treated as
this sort of insolvable crime.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
It would always be her word against his.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
So many times we've identified a perpetrator and they're a
taxi driver at the airport, the barista that handed you
your coffee this morning, the it person that came to
your office or your house.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
It's terrifying.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope.
Erica Lance is our story editor and sound design is
by David Woji. Our producing team is Catherine Fedalosa, Emily
Foreman and Jessica Albert. Our Executive producers are Kate Osborne,
Mangesh Hattigadour and David and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart
(29:26):
Katrina Norville and Ali Perry.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Special thanks to Connell.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Byrne, Will Pearson, Kerrie Lieberman, Nikki Etour, Nathan Etowski, John Burbank,
and the entire team at Authrum.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
I'm Alan Lance Lesser. Thanks for listening.
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