A rape kit collected nearly four decades ago has finally brought justice for a woman who was assaulted in DeKalb County.
In 1988, DNA testing was not available. But in 2019, there was a breakthrough in the case.
The preserved biological evidence from the assault ultimately led to the conviction of Reginald Colwell on May 20, the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office said. The 58-year-old was sentenced Tuesday to two life sentences, plus 20 years.
The case dates to Dec. 30, 1988, when a 20-year-old woman reported being raped at knifepoint near her apartment on Weatherly Drive in unincorporated Stone Mountain. She told investigators at the time that she was heading out to meet her boyfriend earlier that evening when a man wearing a ski mask forced her into the woods behind her complex.
During the assault, Colwell held the victim at knifepoint and threatened to kill her if she did not comply, district attorney’s office spokesperson Claire Chaffins said. The man fled after the attack, and the victim was taken to a police station by her boyfriend to file a report, authorities said.
DeKalb police recovered the victim’s purse and other belongings in the wooded area. Officers also took the victim to Grady Memorial Hospital, where the sexual assault kit was taken.
Though DNA testing was not available at the time, the kit was preserved by the GBI.
A 2015 Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found that more than 1,400 kits went untested at Grady, left behind because of police inaction and a mistaken belief that federal rules barred their release. In 2016, a law was passed requiring all Georgia law enforcement agencies to send stored rape kits to the GBI for testing. In 2021, a law passed that allowed victims of sexual assaults to keep track of evidence in their cases.
The DeKalb DA’s office is part of a multijurisdictional National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) task force, which aims to address the backlog of untested rape kits.
“Our SAKI Team has secured about a dozen convictions and has several more cases pending, though we have also encountered cold cases where we will not be proceeding because the defendant has passed away or the victim has died or had decided not to prosecute,” Chaffins told the AJC in an email.
Through federal SAKI funding, evidence from the 1988 case was tested in 2019 and matched DNA already in a national database, the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. Officials then obtained a warrant to collect a DNA sample from Colwell, which matched the DNA in the rape kit.
Colwell’s DNA was in CODIS because he was convicted of statutory rape in Sumter County in 1993, Chaffins said. Officials also confirmed he lived in DeKalb in 1988.
Records showed Colwell was booked into the DeKalb jail in September 2023. He was living in Albany, Georgia, at the time.
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