A 58-year-old man will face charged for the rape of an 11-year-old girl that occurred nearly 25 years ago, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced.
William Dixon has been charged with sodomy in the first and second degrees for a knifepoint rape on the roof of a Hamilton Heights apartment building, prosecutors told Patch. Investigators were able to match DNA evidence to Dixon, who pleaded guilty to raping a 12-year-old in the Bronx in 2016, prosecutors said.
On February 17, 1993, Dixon allegedly approached an 11-year-old girl in the hallway of a Hamilton Heights apartment building, pulled a hat over her eyes and threatened her with a knife, prosecutors said. Dixon then forced the victim up to the roof of the building and raped her, prosecutors said.
In 2002 — nine years after the attack — a DNA profile was created from the victim’s rape kit, but no immediate matches were found, prosecutors said. In 2013, prosecutors were able to secure what’s known as a “John Doe” indictment, which lists the DNA profile as the perpetrator of a crime. Following Dixon’s 2016 conviction, his DNA profile was entered into the system and matched with the DNA gathered in 2002, prosecutors said.
“Thanks to a pioneering effort by Assistant District Attorneys Martha Bashford and Melissa Mourges, as well as former Sex Crimes Chief Linda Fairstein, cold cases are not forgotten cases. And thanks to the power of DNA evidence, cold cases do not remain cold cases,” Manhatta District Attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement.
“Less than two weeks ago, a DNA hit identified the alleged perpetrator of this brutal assault on a young girl. And more than two decades after the attack, the very same prosecutor that indicted the then-unknown defendant’s DNA profile is handling his prosecution. In case after case, New York continues to reap the benefits of the City’s groundbreaking effort to test backlogged rape kits in the early 2000s.”
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