Man sentenced to life in prison for 1994 Charlotte rape, burglary case

CHARLOTTE — A 53-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for the 1994 rape and burglary of a woman in Charlotte.

A Mecklenburg County jury convicted James Ingersoll of first-degree rape and first-degree burglary following a trial that began in late February.

The charges stem from an incident on June 17, 1994, when Ingersoll entered a victim’s home through an unlocked back door around 1:00 a.m. The woman was asleep in her bed when the attack began. Investigators said the victim attempted to fight back until Ingersoll held a weapon to her neck.

Following the assault, the woman escaped by jumping out of her bedroom window, investigators said. She ran to a friend’s house across the street to contact police. At the hospital, a sexual assault kit was collected, and serological testing confirmed the presence of semen on the victim’s body and clothing, though no suspect was identified at the time.

READ: Detectives make arrest in 28-year-old sex assault cold case, CMPD says

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s Cold Case Unit reopened the investigation in 2018 by sending items from the kit to an outside laboratory for a DNA profile. In 2022, investigators said they used forensic investigative genetic genealogy testing to identify Ingersoll as the suspect. Subsequent DNA analysis confirmed his identity as the attacker.

During the proceedings, the state argued that an aggravating factor existed because Ingersoll had a prior conviction for a criminal offense punishable by more than 60 days of confinement. The judge agreed with the finding, officials said, and sentenced Ingersoll based on the laws in place at the time of the 1994 offenses.

For the rape charge, Ingersoll received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. He received an additional 25 years for the first-degree burglary charge, which the judge ordered to run consecutively to the life sentence. If Ingersoll is eventually released from prison, he will be required to register as a sex offender for 30 years, officials said.

The testing that led to the identification was funded by a grant from the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, officials said. This grant has allowed the District Attorney’s Office and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department to collaborate on reviewing cold case rape and sexual assault investigations.

WATCH: Detectives make arrest in 28-year-old sex assault cold case, CMPD says