A convicted rapist once featured on “America’s Most Wanted” spent one year outside of prison walls only to be locked up again in a cold case out of DeKalb County.
Charlie Scott, 59, pleaded guilty in that case last week, bringing to a close a nearly 30-year investigation into the 1994 rape of a 15-year-old girl near Decatur. Scott, a former private in the U.S. Army, was previously convicted in military court for a series of sexual assaults and other crimes committed in Alabama, Georgia and Texas and served 28 years in a federal prison.
According to the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, he was already a wanted man at the time of the Aug. 6, 1994, assault. The victim was walking home after helping her mother at work when she was approached by Scott at the Colony Ridge Apartments on Glenwood Road, spokesperson Claire Simms Chaffins said.
“He pointed a pistol at her, racked the gun and threatened to kill her if she screamed,” Simms Chaffins said in a news release. “Defendant Scott then forced the victim into the bushes and raped her. Before fleeing, he said that he would come back and kill her if she told anyone.”
A witness saw a man leaving the area while fixing his pants and then heard the girl screaming, she said. Scott, who was later featured on an episode of the long-running television show, was never suspected, and in 1995 he was arrested in California on unrelated charges. Those charges eventually led to his conviction and prison time.
It was only when a sexual assault kit collected in the DeKalb rape was tested in March 2020, through the work of a state sexual assault kit task force, that Scott was connected to the case, the spokesperson said. His DNA was a positive match, and warrants were issued for his arrest. But that same year, Scott was released from federal prison.
His time on the outside would be short-lived. In March 2021, Scott was working as a truck driver when his DeKalb warrants were flagged at a weigh station in Missouri and he was arrested. He was extradited to DeKalb in April 2021 and has been jailed there since then.
Investigators have since linked Scott to sexual assaults of “several other victims” in DeKalb around the time of the 15-year-old’s rape, Simms Chaffins said. Details of those cases were not available.
On Thursday, Scott pleaded guilty as indicted to charges of rape, kidnapping and aggravated assault in the 1994 case and is headed back to prison. Judge Shondeana C. Morris sentenced him to life, with 15 years to serve in custody and the remainder on probation as a sex offender.
Upon his release, Scott may not have any contact with minor children or with any victims.
About the Author
