A Boone County jury deliberated for about two hours on Thursday before convicting a former Columbia man of the gruesome 1984 abduction, rape and throat-slashing of a 17-year-old Hickman student.
The jury convicted 61-year-old James Frederick Wilson of both counts: forcible rape and first degree assault. The female victim, who survived with life-threatening injuries, was abducted while walking to work near Providence and Wilkes in March 1984, almost 41 years ago.
Reporter Haley Swaino from our news partner KMIZ was in the courtroom when the verdict was read, and reports the jury is recommending life in prison on each count. Swaino also reports Wilson’s family members in North Carolina took the witness stand and testified that James Wilson was a good family man and a great stepfather.
Wilson grew up in Columbia and graduated from Rock Bridge high school. He was captured in North Carolina in 2022.
939 the Eagle News was in the courtroom on Tuesday and Wednesday and was there when the victim in the case testified. She now lives in another state and testified for the prosecution. The victim testified that she was a 17-year-old Hickman student and a Columbia police cadet who was walking to her job at Naugles on a stormy early-evening in 1984. She testifies she was walking near Wilkes and Providence when a heavyset man began walking toward her. She says she held her breath as she walked by him because something didn’t feel right. She testifies after she walked by him, the abductor grabbed her, put a knife in her side and forced her into his two-door green vehicle. She provided graphic testimony about being driven to northeast Columbia’s Wellington drive, and told the jury she was raped in the back seat and then forced out of the vehicle and into a creek area, where she testifies her abductor slashed her throat and cut her several times. She testified she “played dead”, hoping her attacker would leave.
The victim spent ten days at Columbia’s University Hospital and suffered major damage to her trachea and vocal cords. The jury saw several graphic photos of her neck wounds.
Boone County Circuit Judge Brouck Jacobs will sentence Wilson sometime this spring.
