Man Found Guilty in Tourist's Murder

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A D.C. jury has convicted a man of murdering a French tourist inside her daughter's home 26 years ago. Melvin Jackson was found guilty Thursday of felony murder, rape and burglary.

Jackson was accused of killing 57-year-old Raymonde Plantiveau, a murder that would likely never have been solved had police not found a box containing DNA from the crime.

It was a single piece of evidence. Long thought lost.

It was an investigation going nowhere until 2004 when detectives discovered a small box inside the D.C. Police evidence warehouse. That was a box prosecutors say contained the DNA profile of a man named Melvin Jackson, the man accused of killing Plantiveau in the bedroom of her daughter's Georgetown home in December of 1983. A roommate of the victim's daughter found her.

Police say she had been raped and stabbed to death. Overkill, police called it. The medical examiner found 21 stab wounds to her back.

The vast majority of evidence in the case has been lost: the murder weapon, the crime scene photos, hair and fibers. All gone, lost along with evidence in dozens of unsolved cases from the 60s, 70s and 80s. But prosecutors say the DNA, along with other circumstantial evidence, is enough to convict Melvin Jackson.

It's a body of evidence the defense says can be explained.

"We believe and unfortunately because its 25 years ago," said Defense Attorney Ross Hecht in an interview Wednesday outside the courthouse, "None of us have good records from that time frame, but we believe Mr. Jackson had consensual relations with the decedent at a time before her passing."

That's a claim the prosecution finds dubious at best.

Melvin Jackson was never a suspect in the murder. The original lead detective even said so.

Testifying in the trial last week, William "Lou" Hennessy, now a Judge in Charles County, said he had been investigating another man, but was never able to link him to the crime. The case went cold. FOX 5 talked to Hennessy about the murder in 2006.

"We were hoping for prints or some type of confession or some of the jewelry that was stolen in the burglary would eventually show up," Hennessy said.

There was no DNA testing back then, but in 1996-- 13 years after the murder-- a D.C. detective approached Hennessy about cases that might be solved with DNA.

"She asked me about cases and this is just one that jumped out at me," said Hennessey. "I remember there being DNA involved in the case."

But a search of the D.C. Police evidence warehouse turned up nothing. It wasn't until a FOX 5 investigation and a subsequent audit by police that the little box with the DNA showed up.

The prosecution told the jury Raymonde Plantiveau was a reserved 57-year-old mother of six-- a French citizen who spoke no English. Certainly not the kind of women who would date a man half her age while her daughter was at work.

The prosecution told the jury Melvin Jackson broke into the home on 39th Street Northwest in the hopes of burglarizing it. He raped Raymonde Plantiveau and stabbed her 21 times.

But the defense is sticking with its story: the two had consensual sex.

"We hope the jury sees the evidence the way the defense has presented it and gives us a just verdict of not guilty on all charges."

Melvin Jackson did not testify in his own defense. There was no explanation to the jury on how the two would have met.

D.C. Police are now required by law to preserve evidence in murder cases for 65 years.