Dorothy Darnel lived almost long enough to see her violent assailant charged.
“There may have been some profanities, but I think there would be a big smile on her face,” Darnel’s son Wayne Harris said on Monday. “She’d be, ‘Yes, you’re going to pay now.'”
Darnel died in Langley on Dec. 15, 2015.
Police in New Westminster, using 20-year-old DNA evidence, have now charged a 48-year-old Vancouver man with a violent assault on Darnel on Oct. 4, 1996, one of the NWPD’s most notorious cold cases.
New Westminster police sketch of suspect in the Oct. 4 sexual assault of 79-year-old Dorothy Darnel. Darnel was attacked in her home as she slept. Her attacker beat her so severely that her cheekbone was shattered and she would lose sight in one eye.
James Gray faces charges of aggravated sexual assault, break and enter, forcible confinement, robbery, choking to overcome resistance, and uttering threats.
Court records show Gray has a variety of convictions, including for drug possession and driving offences.
“It feels finally like closure,” Harris said from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where he now spends most of his time. “We’d pretty much given up hope the guy would be found. My thing was, this guy was still out there getting away with it. The streets are a little safer now.”
It was almost 4 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 4, 1996, when Darnel was attacked, her face shattered to the point she permanently lost sight in one eye. Police at the time said she was “viciously attacked.”
A man had crawled through the living-room window of her second-storey apartment in New West, straddled her in her bedroom, then beat and raped her.
Less than a month shy of 80 and living on her own, Darnel fought back with her wooden cane, but the attacker wound up using it on her.
In an interview with The Vancouver Sun in 1997, she described her terrifying ordeal.
“He pounded the side of my head so badly my eye split wide open,” she said. “I was in total shock, in absolute terror.”
She eventually was able to flee up three flights of stairs to the apartment of the building manager, who called police.
“It’s a despicable act that has personally offended every police officer and civilian in this police department,” Cpl. Gary Weishaar of the NWPD said at the time.
Darnel remembered her attacker well: He was blond, had a goatee and wore a black T-shirt that read “Some people are alive simply because it’s against the law to kill them.”
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Darnel told The Vancouver Sun the attack had traumatized her, and she was still in therapy to deal with her emotions, but that didn’t stop her from stepping forward at seminars to warn seniors to take safety seriously.
She urged them to install peepholes, bar their windows and never buzz strangers into their apartment.
“If you’re alone, you’re vulnerable,” she told them. “Don’t let strangers into your building, don’t open your door to anyone you don’t know, secure your home.”
The NWPD’s major crime unit caught a break when RCMP forwarded DNA from a March, 2016, break and enter in Coquitlam. It led to the charges being laid.
Darnel was an enthusiastic Toastmaster, weaver and ballroom dancer, according to her obituary. She died peacefully in her sleep, 15 days after turning 99.
“She was independent almost to the end, no walker until she was 97,”said Helga Petersen, a longtime caregiver to Darnel. “She was a very strong, proud woman, very lovely.”
“It means a great deal to me to see this 20-year-old case has come to a close,” said New Westminster police Chief Const. Dave Jones, who was among the officers involved in the original investigation.
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