Frederick Fitzgerald Gandy, 55, was arrested last week and charged with attempted murder, rape, burglary, and attempted armed robbery.
The case stems from January 2003. The victim had urged the West Point Police Department (Mississippi) to reopen the case. After COVID-19 further delayed the investigation, she asked again on April 5,2022. Detective Ramirez Ivy took on the case.
Ivy discovered untested DNA evidence. It was sent to the state crime lab in Pearl. Police said testing methods not available in 2003 delivered results that implicated Gandy.
“The pretrial rules do not allow us to say much about the evidence,” Scott Colom, 16th Circuit District Attorney, told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal newspaper, and reiterated during a press conference. “I will say this is very solid evidence. I am confident we will be able to get a conviction.”
Colom specified the testing was not genetic genealogy. The DNA testing developed a profile that could be entered into CODIS, where Gandy was first identified as a suspect.
The victim said she does not blame police for the two decades she waited before an arrest was made. She applauded detective Ivy for treating her humanely, which she said is often missing in cases like hers. She now works as a victim’s advocate in Tennessee.