ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - An Albany, Georgia, man was given two life sentences plus 20 years by a DeKalb County superior court judge in connection with a sexual assault that happened almost four decades ago.

Reginald Colwell, 58, was found guilty last month of kidnapping, rape and aggravated assault in the Dec. 30, 1988, incident.

DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Gregory Adams, who presided over the trial, sentenced Colwell on Tuesday.

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According to the investigation, the 20-year-old victim went to the DeKalb County Police Department to report she had been raped.

She told investigators she was headed out to meet her boyfriend earlier that evening and heard a noise as she locked the front door of their apartment. When she turned around, a man in a ski mask put a knife to her throat and forced her into the woods behind the apartment complex on Weatherly Drive in unincorporated Stone Mountain.

The man held the victim at knifepoint and sexually assaulted her, threatening to kill her if she did not comply. After the attack, the man ordered the woman to stay on the ground and ran off.

After waiting to make sure he did not return, the woman ran to a nearby neighborhood for help. A woman helped the victim call her boyfriend, who then took her to the police station to file a report.

DeKalb police searched the wooded area and recovered the victim’s purse and other belongings, which were scattered during the attack. Officers transported the woman to Grady Memorial Hospital for a sexual assault exam.

DNA testing was not available at the time of the crime, but the biological evidence collected in the sexual assault kit was preserved at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance established the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), an effort to fund testing of previously unprocessed sexual assault kits across the country. The DeKalb County District Attorney’s office is part of a multijurisdictional SAKI Task Force in partnership with the Georgia Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC).

Through federal SAKI funding, the evidence in this case was tested, resulting in a CODIS match investigative lead to Colwell in June 2019. Investigators secured a warrant to collect a DNA sample from Colwell, which confirmed the victim’s sexual assault kit contained his DNA.

Investigators also learned Colwell was living in DeKalb County in 1988.

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