DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A horrific crime that took the lives of a brother and sister back in 1990 in DeKalb County appears to have finally been solved.
On Thursday, June 6, Kenneth P Perry, of Loganville, was booked into the DeKalb County Jail and charged with two counts of murder and one count of rape.
Perry’s arrest warrants, which 11Alive obtained on Friday, are heavily redacted, including the location of the crime and the victims.
However, the warrants do provide details on the double homicide that happened on Sunday, July 15, 1990.
The warrants allege between midnight and just after 4:00 a.m., the man who was killed, who is not identified, brought Perry back to his home, where his sister was also staying.
Sometime during that four-hour period, the district attorney’s office alleges Perry stabbed the man, killing him inside the home.
The district attorney’s office then alleged Perry entered the man's sister’s room, where he put a pillow over her head, raped her and stabbed her several times.
The warrant states she tried to call 911 for help, but Perry “pulled the chord out of the wall.”
She died two weeks after the brutal attack.
It would be years -- 22 years, in fact, before the victim’s sexual assault kit could be tested.
In a previous cold sexual assault case, DeKalb County District Attorney Shery Boston explained that prior to 1998, investigators could only test DNA evidence if they had a suspect with whom they could compare the samples. As a result, many of the rape kits from before 1999 went untested and were housed in the GBI.
Perry’s arrest warrant states that in 2022, his alleged victim’s sexual assault kit was tested and produced a male DNA profile.
In 2024, the warrant states the district attorney’s office had the DNA profile uploaded into a national database. Their strategy worked because they got a DNA hit more than 700 miles away in Detroit.
Perry’s arrest warrant states the DNA hit was tied to an unsolved sexual assault case, and the accused suspect was Perry.
It would be 33 years after the alleged crime that the district attorney’s office would take their evidence to a judge.
On June 5, his arrest warrants were signed, and the following afternoon, on June 6, Perry was arrested by the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office.
On June 7, Perry appeared before a magistrate judge who, due to the serious nature of his charges, could not set bond. His next appearance will be in the coming weeks in front of a Superior Court judge.