Man gets life sentence for decades old Stone Mountain double murder

The end to a Stone Mountain double murder case that went cold for more than 30 years came in March when jurors found a Loganville man guilty of the crimes.

DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston announced 56-year-old Kenneth Perry was found guilty on two counts of malice murder, two counts of felony murder, rape, four counts of aggravated assault, two counts of aggravated battery, two counts of possession of a knife during the commission of a felony, and theft by taking, all in connection with the rape and murder of 43-year-old Pamela Sumpter as well as the murder of her brother, 46-year-old John Sumpter in 1990.

According to a timeline of events provided by the district attorney’s office, the investigation began on July 15, 1990, when officers with the DeKalb County Police Department (DKPD) responded to a report of a person stabbed at an apartment complex on Tree Hills Parkway in Stone Mountain. When DKPD arrived, they said, they found Pamela Sumpter at a neighbor’s apartment. She was visibly injured and said she had been raped and stabbed.

Investigators said that Pamela Sumpter told officers that her brother, John Sumpter, had been stabbed as well and officers found John Sumpter dead in the apartment next door.

Pamela Sumpter was transported to a hospital where medical professionals collected a rape kit that included DNA from her attacker, said investigators. Police then interviewed her in the hospital. Pamela Sumpter told investigators that her brother had brought a man over to their apartment and that she knew very little about him, but she was able to give police a detailed physical description.

On Aug. 5, 1990, Pamela Sumpter died due to her injuries in a hospital and the case went cold, according to officials.

Years later, an investigator in the district attorney’s office included the Sumpter double murder case in an application for a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), stating that unknown DNA collected from the rape kit could potentially help solve the case.

The Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA grant, secured by the office in 2023, led to a big payoff; after working with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to upload the DNA profile at the national level, investigators in the district attorney’s office received a match to an unprosecuted sexual assault case in Detroit from 1992. The victim in the 1992 case named her ex-boyfriend, Perry, as the attacker.

Perry was living in Loganville at the time of his arrest, and a DNA sample taken during the arrest was a match to the DNA collected in Pamela Sumpter’s rape kit.

After being found guilty of the crimes on March 11, DeKalb County Superior Court Chief Judge Shondeana C. Morris, who presided over Perry’s trial, sentenced the defendant to serve three consecutive life sentences, plus 100 years in custody during a sentence hearing on March 18.

The case, assigned to the cold case team, was prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Shannon Hodder, with assistance from Senior Assistant District Attorney Agatha Romanowski, Supervising District Attorney Investigator Matthew McLendon, District Attorney Investigator James Delk and Director of Victim Services Amanda Planchard. The DeKalb County Police Department led the initial investigation.