DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Thirty-five years after a rape and double murder in DeKalb County, a jury takes less than three hours to convict the killer.

Kenneth Perry, 56, was found guilty of all 14 counts he faced in the July 1990 fatal stabbings of Pamela Sumpter, 43, and John Sumpter, 46. The Sumpters were siblings. Perry was arrested in 2024, in Loganville.

The night of July 15, 1990, DeKalb County Police responded to an apartment complex on Tree Hills Parkway. Ms. Sumpter had managed to get to a neighbor’s apartment to call for help, and told officers she had been raped and stabbed, and that her brother, John Sumpter, had been stabbed as well next door.

“Her attacker had cut all the phone cords inside her townhouse, so she was not able to call 911,” says DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston.

Pamela told officers that her brother had brought a new acquaintance to visit the apartment that evening before she went to bed.

“She woke up a few hours later with that man standing over her,” says Boston. The man brutally raped, stabbed, and tried to smother Ms. Sumpter with her own pillow, but she survived and was able to provide the police a description of her attacker--including the fact that he was from Detroit, Michigan."

Ms. Sumpter died of her injuries a couple of weeks later.

Decades later, the DA’s Cold Case team identified Defendant Perry through investigative work funded by the Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA grant secured by the office in October 2023 from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Justice Programs (OJP) Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA).

A previously-untested rape kit with the unidentified DNA was tested. Forensic Genetic Genealogy--FGG--runs DNA through a database of law enforcement-accessible family tree databases to look for familial matches. In February 2024, the private lab Othram began analysis; meanwhile, with the help of the GBI, the DNA profile from Sumpter’s rape kit was uploaded to a national DNA database.

“Within days, we got a match to a sexual assault in Detroit, Michigan,” says Boston. It, too, was unprosecuted, from 1992.

That led the team to Perry.

Perry took the stand in his own defense Monday. He told jurors that he had been drugged and sexually assaulted at that Stone Mountain apartment while there with the Sumpters and a third man named “Alvin.”

“All three of these people were alive when I left the apartment that night,” Perry said in court. He acknowledged that he had never called the police to report anything.

Jurors began deliberating Tuesday afternoon.

Boston says while her office is satisfied with the conviction, the verdict is not for them.

“The jury’s verdict today was for Pamela, John, and the entire Sumpter family--a family who has waited decades for their loved ones' murderer to be brought to justice,” she says.

DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Shondeana Morris slated sentencing for Tuesday, March 18, 2025, 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.

“I hope today’s verdict sends a message to anyone who falsely believes that they have gotten away with a crime in DeKalb County that no matter how much time has passed, we will never give up on securing justice,” says Boston.