Summary
In July 1990, officers with the DeKalb County Police Department (DKPD) responded to a report of a stabbing at an apartment complex on Tree Hills Parkway in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Stone Mountain is located east of Atlanta. Upon arriving, DKPD officers found Pamela Sumpter at a neighbor’s apartment; she reported being raped and stabbed, and that her brother, John, had also been stabbed. John Sumpter was found deceased in the apartment that the siblings shared. Following the attack, Pamela was transported to an area hospital, where a rape kit was collected. The rape kit was found to include male DNA belonging to her attacker.
While hospitalized, Pamela was interviewed by DKPD officers, providing them with a detailed description of the man who attacked her and murdered her brother. She told investigators that the man was a new acquaintance of her brother John, and that he was from Detroit, Michigan. Pamela succumbed to her injuries on August 5, 1990, and with a lack of viable leads, the case went cold.
In November 2022, as part of an initiative to test pre-1999 rape kit evidence, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) sent DNA evidence from Pamela’s rape kit to a private lab for traditional STR testing. By February 2023, a male DNA profile was developed and uploaded to Georgia’s statewide DNA database. The profile did not match to any known offenders within the state’s database.
Still unsolved in the Spring of 2023, the Sumpter double homicide case was selected by a DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office investigator when an audit of fifty unsolved homicide cases in DeKalb County was completed in preparation for a “Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA” grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, which was awarded in October 2023. The case was chosen as a good candidate for the grant as DNA evidence from an unknown perpetrator was available.
In February 2024, the Dekalb County District Attorney’s Office worked with the GBI to upload the STR DNA profile for the unknown male suspect at the national level and received a match to an unprosecuted 1992 sexual assault case from Detroit, Michigan. At the same time, with no match to a known individual, the Dekalb County District Attorney’s Office teamed with Othram to determine if advanced DNA testing could help to identify the unknown suspect in the case.
Forensic evidence was submitted to Othram in The Woodlands, Texas. Othram scientists successfully developed a DNA extract from the forensic evidence and used Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing® to build a comprehensive DNA profile for the unknown man. Othram’s in-house forensic genetic genealogy team then used this profile to conduct genealogy research, ultimately providing new investigative leads to law enforcement.
Using these new investigative leads, paired with the case file from the 1992 unprosecuted sex assault, investigators identified a likely suspect in the case—55-year-old Kenneth Perry of Loganville, Georgia. On June 6, 2024, members of the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office Fugitive Unit executed an arrest warrant and Perry was taken into custody without incident. Investigators collected a DNA sample from Perry to confirm that he was the perpetrator in the 1990 case. The DNA sample collected from Perry at the time of his arrest matched to the DNA sample collected in Pamela Sumpter’s 1990 rape kit.
A DeKalb County Grand Jury has indicted Kenneth Perry on 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, all in connection with the 1990 rape and murder of 43-year-old Pamela Sumpter and the murder of her brother, 46-year-old John Sumpter. Kenneth Perry is in custody at the DeKalb County Jail, where he is being held without bond.
Anyone who believes they may have information about Kenneth Perry or the murders of John and Pamela Sumpter is encouraged to call the District Attorney’s Cold Case Tip Line at 404-371-2444.
The identification of Kenneth Perry represents the 17th case in the State of Georgia where officials have publicly identified an individual using technology developed by Othram. Most recently in May, 2024, Marietta County Jane Doe was identified after her remains were discovered in June 1993.
Michael Vogen
Director of Case Management
Michael works with law enforcement agencies throughout the United States and Canada on “unsolvable“ cases that can benefit from advanced DNA testing methods. He helps these agencies use cutting edge DNA sequencing and new forensic techniques to develop investigative leads for their cases.