Guilty verdict in 1985 rape, kidnap

DNA evidence was found 30 years later

Dobie Hunter was found guilty Thursday of the 1985 kidnapping and rape of a Fort Lauderdale teenager that went unsolved for 29 years before DNA evidence revealed him as a suspect.

A jury of four men and two women convicted Hunter of three counts of sexual battery and one count of kidnapping after three hours of deliberation over two days.

But the verdict was not entirely bad news for the defendant. The jury did not find him guilty of armed sexual battery and armed kidnapping, which would have made a life sentence mandatory.

Broward Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes heard an unexpected plea of mercy from the victim in the case, who is now 47 and testified via Skype.

“Iwas in terror for almost 30 years, not knowing whether he was going to come back for me,” she said. Butwhen it came to punishment, the woman asked Holmes to choose a sentence that reflected theamount of time he went without answering for the crime.

Holmes agreed, but not before telling Hunter that he probably deserved a life sen-

tence.

“The kidnapping aggravates this crime,” she said. “I could send you to prison for life and not lose aminute of sleep tonight.”

Hunter was apologetic in his statement to the judge.

“I just want to say I’m sorry.” he said. “She [the victim] mentioned that she was a God-fearing person, and that’s a good thing, because now that’s what I am too.”

The woman testified this week that she had been abducted by two men while she was walking with a friend a few blocks fromher home in northwest Fort Lauderdale on Oct. 1, 1985. Hunter, she said, was so forceful in pulling her into his car that shewas literally pulled from her shoes. The friend went home and told his family, who called 911.

The victim was returned to her neighborhood nine hours later, after both men repeatedly raped her, she testified.

The case went unsolved until 2014, when the victim, inspired by her own daughter’s 16th birthday, asked police whether therewere any new leads on the case. Investigators found that the DNA taken from her medical examination matched Hunter’s.

Hunter had no criminal history before Oct. 1, 1985, but afterward he had multiple arrests and convictions and was a registered sex offender.

Police think the other manin the car was Hunter’s friend Alfred Stevens, who died in 2011.