(Anchorage, AK) – On February 23rd, Superior Court Judge Daniel Doty sentenced 55-year-old Michael Williams to serve 25 years for Sexual Assault in the First Degree for the 1993 sexual assault of a fourteen-year-old girl near Ketchikan High School.

In Jan. 2024, a Ketchikan jury found Williams guilty of one count of Sexual Assault in the First Degree and one count of Sexual Abuse of a Minor in the Second Degree after a week-long trial. Under the law, the two convictions merged at sentencing, and Williams was sentenced for only the Sexual Assault in the First Degree conviction.

On Jan. 24, 1993, the then-14-year-old victim reported that a stranger followed her as she was walking across the high school baseball field on her way to return gym equipment to her locker. The man grabbed her from behind, covered her mouth, dragged her behind a nearby dugout, and sexually assaulted her. The man told her he had a knife and threatened to use it on her if she screamed or told anyone what happened. After the incident, she immediately ran to a nearby house and reported the rape to an adult and then to the police. The victim reported she could not see her assailant’s face because it was covered with a scarf. A sexual assault kit, including vaginal swabs, was collected and sent to the Alaska State Crime Detection Laboratory for testing. Despite extensive investigation by the Ketchikan Police Department, the case went cold.

In 2004, the Alaska State Crime Laboratory developed a DNA profile from semen collected during the victim’s sexual assault examination. That profile was later uploaded into CODIS, a nationwide DNA database, however the unknown profile never matched to any DNA profile in the database.

Ketchikan Police Department officers repeatedly reopened the case, re-examined the evidence, and conducted follow up investigation. However, they remained unable to identify a viable suspect in the sexual assault until 2021, when testing of an unrelated sexual assault kit as part of the Alaska Capital Project led to a potential match to Michael Williams in the CODIS DNA database. The Lab confirmed the match by comparing the DNA sample from the victim’s sexual assault kit to a known sample taken from Michael Williams.

The case was initially investigated by former Ketchikan Police Department detectives Anna (Endecott) Goemer and Jerry Seufert, who both testified at the trial. Between 1993 and 2021, the case was investigated by multiple Ketchikan Police Department detectives. KPD Lieutenant Andy Berntson investigated the case in 2021 and testified at trial.

Assistant Attorney General Erin McCarthy of the Office of Special Prosecutions prosecuted the case for the State, with the assistance of Ketchikan District Attorney’s Office paralegal Lisa Dial.

The Department of Law thanks the Ketchikan Police Department, the Alaska Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, the Alaska State Troopers, the Sitka Police Department, and the United States Coast Guard for their partnership and assistance in investigating this case over the course of several decades.

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