ATLANTA — Two women raped 48 hours apart more than four decades years ago in the same Atlanta apartment complex have at last gotten a measure of justice.
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Their attacker has now pleaded guilty.
Both victims told their stories Wednesday to Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Mark Winne.
“He took something from me that I didn’t give. He violated me,” Cynthia Hunt said.
“Just call it evil. How can someone be that evil?” Juanita Ransome said.
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Ransome and Hunt say they share a terrible bond, both raped by the same attacker, Anthony Ross Houston, in the same apartment complex in 1985.
“Opened my eyes, I saw I’m standing there. And at that point, he threatened me and attacked me,” Ransome said.
Hunt says her 4-year-old daughter was in her bed when Houston broke in.
“His words was, ‘She better not ask you for nothing. She better not move, because if she do, I will kill you and her.’ So my prayer silently was like, ‘Lord, please don’t let her say anything. Just let her lay still,’” she said.
Both say for decades they felt abandoned by the system.
“Essentially for both attacks, he would utilize a ground-floor window,” said Fulton County Senior Assistant District Attorney Caitlin Adcock.
“Do believe that justice delayed does not mean justice denied,” Deputy D.A. Christina Robinson said.
The prosecutors say DNA from rape kits from Hunt’s and Ransome’s cases, that had been in storage for decades, was tested against a database of DNA from convicted felons and others from across the country and yielded matches to Houston.
Now Houston’s pleaded guilty to both rapes and more. And Judge Rachel Krause sentenced him to 45 years in prison.
“Forty years later, justice is being served. That’s a long time,” Ransome said.
“It’s kind of like a healing and knowing that he is off the streets and can’t hurt anyone else,” Hunt said.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis says federal funding has helped pay for testing these sexual assault kits and hundreds of others, plus some prosecution expenses.
“And while we have this grant, we are able to do this work. And so it’s really important work,” Willis said.
Adcock and Robinson say in 1987, roughly two years after Houston raped Hunt and Ransome, he was convicted of the rape of a mother and daughter and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Another victim testified in his trial to establish a pattern of conduct that he raped her.
Prosecutors Robinson and Adcock say he was indicted for the rape of that witness plus three other rapes and an attempted rape, but that indictment was deaddocketed, or postponed indefinitely, the year after Houston got life.
The prosecutors say Houston made parole in 2022, but he cut off an ankle monitor and lived under an assumed name until his arrest on the cold-case rapes, and his parole was revoked.
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