OPD makes arrest in 28-year-old case

Don Wilkins, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.
·2 min read

Mar. 29—Owensboro Police Department detectives announced Tuesday that an arrest has been made in a more than 28-year-old cold case.

According to an OPD report, Robert D. Shelton, 59, of Hickory, North Carolina, has been charged with kidnapping and first-degree sexual abuse in Kentucky, along with an additional charge of rape from the Indiana State Police.

Shelton's charges stem from the December 1994 kidnapping of a then-19-year-old woman near Brescia University.

According to police, the woman was sexually assaulted in Owensboro before she was taken to Indiana, where the assault continued.

Lt. Chris Green, commander of OPD's Criminal Investigations Division, said the case started coming together in September 2022 when the woman, who reported the crime, called for a "routine follow up" in the case.

Green said the ISP had been keeping the evidence from the crime and that it was initially processed before every state used the FBI's combined DNA index system (CODIS).

"It is literally a database where the FBI compiles DNA evidence from people who have been convicted of offenses; it is also DNA evidence that comes from unsolved crimes and/or missing persons," Green said. "As we reopened the case, we saw that the evidence had been processed but not entered into CODIS."

Green said ISP reopened the case, requesting the items to be tested through CODIS.

"The results of the re-test came back to the identification of Robert Shelton as a potential suspect," Green said.

That's when OPD Det. Cody Cliff was assigned the case.

Cliff said he and an ISP detective traveled to North Carolina in early-March. They gathered more DNA evidence and interviewed Shelton.

On March 20, the Brookford Police Department in North Carolina arrested Shelton on an OPD warrant.

OPD detectives said Shelton was living in Owensboro at the time he allegedly committed the crime.

However, they declined to say if Shelton and the woman knew each other.

Prior to being charged in this case, Shelton had not been a suspect.

"His name had not come up in the investigation at all until the point we got the CODIS hit back," Green said.

As of Tuesday, Shelton was being held in the Catawba County jail in North Carolina on a $250,000 bond.

"At some point, there will be an extradition that takes place from North Carolina," Green said. "Whether he comes to Kentucky first or Indiana, that's kind of up to the courts and prosecutors."