A 53-year-old deacon of a District church was arrested Friday and charged with first-degree murder in the rape and killing of a woman in a Northwest Washington burglary more than two decades ago, authorities said.
D.C. police said they linked the suspect to the crime through DNA evidence that had remained untested in a warehouse for years. It is the first time that DNA evidence has led to an arrest in such an old homicide case in the District, police officials said.
Melvin Jackson Jr., who lives above his church in the 1700 block of Trinidad Avenue NE, is accused of killing Raymonde Plantiveau, a French citizen who was visiting her daughter in Washington. Plantiveau, 57, was found dead Dec. 1, 1983, in her daughter's bed. She had been stabbed, and the bloody weapon -- a steak knife from the kitchen -- was next to her body.
Detectives combing through old homicide cases were able to link semen from the crime scene to Jackson because his DNA profile was in a database kept in Virginia, authorities said. Jackson was convicted of a robbery in Virginia in the 1970s, and Virginia's database includes samples from tens of thousands of offenders.
‘It has been so many years’
News of the arrest came as a shock to those who knew Plantiveau, as well as friends and family members of Jackson.
"It's like a hand reaching up from nowhere," said Heidi Bulich, a lawyer in Michigan who was a roommate of Plantiveau's daughter. Another roommate discovered the body. "It's just incredible. It has been so many years."
Bulich, who learned of the arrest from a reporter, recalled that the killing "had been a horrible time" for her and Plantiveau's family.
Jackson has been in custody since mid-December, when D.C. police arrested him on an unrelated warrant in Virginia, police said. That warrant stemmed from his failure to appear at sentencing for a domestic violence conviction in the mid-1990s, authorities said.
Jackson is a deacon at the Sonship Church Center, a small church founded by his mother in a storefront next to a convenience store. He also worked recently as a cook at the Washington Convention Center, friends said.
"I don't think he did it," said Duane Ellis-Johnson, 50, one of Jackson's friends. "It's kind of disappointing. He was a nice guy. He loaned you money. He really helped you get the devil off your back. . . . I know Melvin. He would never do this."
Jackson's mother, Shirley C. Lewis, said in a brief interview that her son is a good man and not capable of killing Plantiveau. She declined to comment further.
The investigation into Plantiveau's death generated dozens of leads, but detectives were not able to identify a solid suspect, according to police and news reports at the time.
Evidence lay dormant for years
Plantiveau was napping in her daughter's home in the 1900 block of 39th Street NW when someone cut open a screen and slipped through an unlocked door on a warm fall afternoon. Police speculated in news reports that Plantiveau might have confronted the burglar and was then attacked. No one else was home.
The house was ransacked, and the killer left with jewelry, cash and Plantiveau's purse, police said.
Evidence technicians scoured the house for at least two days and collected evidence that Plantiveau had been raped. That evidence, stored in a cardboard box, remained unexamined for more than 20 years in a D.C. police warehouse in Southeast Washington.
Unpaid interns, working on a project that has examined old D.C. homicide cases for potential evidence, found the box in 2004, authorities said. In June of that year, police submitted the evidence for testing to the FBI's crime laboratory. Several months ago, detectives were alerted that it matched Jackson's DNA profile, authorities said, and the investigation stepped up, leading to the charges.
Authorities declined to describe yesterday any other evidence they have that could tie Jackson to the slaying. The charging papers have not been made public but will be released once Jackson appears in D.C. Superior Court to answer the charges. That hearing is scheduled for today.
Detective James Trainum, who had cited the case in a 2004 interview about the need for DNA testing, declined to comment yesterday. He referred calls to Capt. C.V. Morris, head of the department's violent crimes branch.
Morris did not respond to pages or a message left on his office telephone. A police spokesman referred calls to the U.S. attorney's office, which is prosecuting the case. Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, said he would reserve comment until after today's court hearing.
Police have said they want to take advantage of technology and reexamine old cases by submitting more DNA samples for testing. The process has been slowed, however, because the department does not have its own sophisticated crime laboratory and must rely on the FBI for such tests.
The city is in the early stages of designing a multimillion-dollar laboratory, police officials have said.