Man arrested in 30-year old cold case in Cobb

Since 1990, all leads in a Cobb County sexual assault case failed to lead to an arrest, but thanks to a sexual assault kit, a Marietta man is finally behind bars.

After matching the evidence to a suspect, police arrested Christopher Milton, 55, and charged him with kidnapping, rape and aggravated assault and other felonies in the incident, the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office announced Friday. 

The DA’s Office said the case was reignited when an assault kit was tested by the GBI. The evidence sample was placed in a database to determine if a potential suspect could be matched to it. An analysis of a sexual assault kit identified Milton as the perpetrator of a crime committed more than 30 years ago. 

According to his arrest warrant, Police say that on March 5, 1990, Milton approached a woman in the Cumberland area, near the intersection of Windy Hill Road and North Park Place and dragged the woman into a nearby wooded area, where he told her he had a knife. Milton beat her and proceeded to rape her, according to his warrant.

The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative made Milton’s identification possible after all these years, according to the D.A.’s office. The Initiative is a grant-funded program that “allows the testing of samples from sexual assault kits and property in evidence for DNA and other evidence.” A Sexual Assault Kit Initiative investigator in the DA’s office, Lisa Bishop, re-opened the case and was “integral in the collection of additional information which provided sufficient evidence to secure a warrant for the arrest of Milton,” according to the office.

The arrest warrant says DNA evidence from the woman’s sexual assault kit suggested Milton might be the perpetrator in February of 2020. Last month, the DA’s office obtained a warrant for Milton’s DNA, and on Tuesday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab matched that DNA to DNA from the sexual assault kit.

“The frequency in which this DNA profile obtained would be expected to occur in a given population is one in three nonillion,” the arrest warrant states.

Milton was arrested with help from the Fugitive Division of the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office.