Haley Swaino
EDITOR’S NOTE: A charge was corrected in this story.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
A woman who was 17 at the time of her 1984 attack testified Tuesday on the first day of her alleged assailant’s trial.
James F. Wilson was arrested and charged with rape and first-degree assault with a deadly weapon in an attack on a 17-year-old girl. He has pleaded not guilty.
The victim told jurors that she was walking to work in northeast Columbia on March 24, 1984, when a man approached her on the sidewalk. She recalls being somewhere behind Hickman High School walking towards Providence Road when he “came out of nowhere.”
“Something about him kind of made me hold my breath,” the woman said. “The minute I released my breath he grabbed me and I felt a knife in my side.”
She said she could feel the sharp point of the knife grazing her as he forced her to his nearby parked car. She said the man didn’t say anything as he abducted her.
“So quickly that I barely had time to think, ‘Do I run?’” the woman testified.
She told the jury that as he drove she questioned him. She asked him why he was doing it.
“’Because girl’s don’t like me very much,’” she said the man said.
“I just started saying the Lord’s prayer over and over again,” the woman said.
She said that during the drive the man told her to take her clothes off. She said she did as he requested because he was still holding the knife.
When the man stopped the car on a dead-end street, he told her to get in the backseat, the woman said. He then raped her, she testified.
After the sexual assault, he told her to get out of the car, the woman testified. She said he pushed her to the ground and sat on top of her as he repeatedly stabbed her throat.
“I thought that was the end,” she said. She pretended to be dead.
“He cut me once more, maybe two times after that,” the woman testified. She said he left her in a nearby creek. She climbed out after she saw her attacker’s headlights leave and walked to a nearby house to get help.
Retired CPD officer Vance Pitman testified about the injuries he saw when he arrived to a call at that house.
“All the way across the throat between the carotid arteries on both sides. And it went deep into her throat,” Pitman said. “I could see the trachea cut.”
He told the jury that the victim could not speak so she communicated with a pad of paper and pen.
“She wrote, ‘Do you think I’m going to live?'” Pitman said.
The jury trial is expected to last three days at the Boone County Courthouse.
Wilson, 61, of Mooresville, North Carolina, is accused of raping and assaulting the teen in the 4000 block of Wellington Drive in northeast Columbia on March 24, 1984. He lived in Columbia at the time and graduated from Rock Bridge High School in 1981.
According to court documents, the girl was abducted at knife point while walking to work, raped and assaulted.
Wilson allegedly grabbed the victim and forced her into his nearby car with a pocket knife. He then drove the car to a dead-end street where he attempted to remove the victim’s clothing, prosecutors say.
According to the probable cause statement, Wilson had trouble removing her clothing so he forced the victim to remove it. He then allegedly took her outside of the car and raped her.
James Frederick Wilson
After the rape, Wilson took the victim to a grassy area away from the road, pushed her to the ground and slashed her throat repeatedly with the pocket knife, authorities allege. Investigators say he then pushed the victim into a nearby creek where she stayed until she heard his car drive away.
The victim was treated at University Hospital for multiple lacerations that required surgery. Her trachea and vocal cords were damaged, according to court documents. The hospital also conducted a sexual assault examination.
The victim described her attacker as a white man, around 18 to 19 years old, 5 feet, 9 inches tall and weighing about 190 to 200 pounds.
The case was reopened for further investigation in 2020. The sexual assault kit was sent for forensic DNA testing.
A break came when DNA from the crime scene was matched with Wilson’s DNA, according to previous reporting. The Columbia Police Department found that Wilson was living in Columbia when the incident occurred and his 1981 Rock Bridge High School yearbook photo resembled the sketch of the suspect.
CPD notified the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation after learning where Wilson lived, according to previous reporting. The bureau was able to find a disposable razor with hair still in the blades from Wilson’s trash. The razor and other items were sent to CPD, which then sent the samples for DNA analysis. The samples matched the profile from the 1984 rape kit, authorities say.
Boone County Prosecuting Attorney Roger Johnson charged Wilson on Oct. 25, 2022. Wilson was arrested at his home in North Carolina and brought to Missouri, according to previous reporting.
