COLUMBIA, S.C. — A judge has sentenced a man to consecutive life sentences for kidnapping and killing a four-year-old Lexington girl decades ago.
Thomas McDowell was convicted Thursday of charges of murder, kidnapping, and burglary in the death of Jessica Gutierrez, who was taken from her home in Lexington County back in 1986 and never seen again. The jury deliberated for roughly two hours before rendering their unanimous decision.
A short time later, Judge Debra McCaslin sentenced McDowell to life sentences on the murder and kidnapping charges. The burglary charge will be sentenced later.
During the trial this week, prosecutors tried to prove McDowell was responsible for the crime, based mainly on evidence collected back when the incident first took place. Prosecutors laid out an argument that McDowell, who was an ex-boyfriend of Jessica's mother, Debra, broke into the home through a propped window, then took the girl before killing her.
Jessica's body has never been recovered.
One of the key pieces of evidence was a fingerprint recovered from that window in 1986. A Lexington County Sheriff's Department fingerprint analyst, James Hickman, testified that the print matched one from McDowell's hand. Hickman said other examinations of the fingerprints over the years had made the same conclusion. But the defense countered by saying that it's difficult to know when the print was made and that because McDowell had done work around the home, it's possible that the print was made long before the killings took place. The state countered by saying the house, including the window, was frequently cleaned back then.
The prosecution also put Michael Fowler, who said he was in jail with McDowell in the 1980s, on the stand. He said McDowell told him that he'd killed a four-year-old girl, then dismembered her body and buried her. Fowler said the man didn't mention the girl's name, however.
Jessica's sister, Rebecca, testified on Tuesday about what she saw the night her sister was taken. She remembered seeing a man with a hat standing over her sister. She said she didn't say anything for fear of what he might do and reported her sister as missing the next morning.
Most of the rest of the state's presentation was less conclusive, relying on circumstantial evidence to present a chain of facts that pointed toward McDowell but didn't directly connect him. The state said cigarettes and a pack of cigarettes near the window matched the brand McDowell used. There were also relatives of McDowell who testified he changed his appearance, including shaving his face and no longer wearing a hat, in the timeframe roughly around the time of Jessica's disappearance. And DNA collected at the scene pointed to a male being there- only females lived at the house- but it didn't get more specific.
In closing arguments, the defense said all the evidence did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt their client was responsible. They did not call any witnesses during the trial.
The verdict ends a case that had gone cold until January 2022, when the Lexington County Sheriff's Department finally made an arrest. Investigators had announced a year earlier in 2021 that they were taking a fresh look at the case. McDowell was taken into custody by the Wake Forest Police Department at his home about 20 miles north of Raleigh, North Carolina, and transferred to the Lexington County Detention Center.