A Washington man who spent 28 years in prison for raping and murdering a 21-year-old Georgetown University student was released Tuesday after DNA evidence showed he was innocent.
Upon setting him free, authorities handed Donald E. Gates a bus ticket, winter clothes and $75. D.C. Superior Court Judge Fred Ugast, who presided over the now 58-year-old’s trial, threw out Gates’ conviction Tuesday morning. He was released hours later from a prison in Tucson, Ariz.
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In September 1982, a D.C. jury convicted Gates of killing and raping Catherine Schilling in Rock Creek Park. At the time, he was in the D.C. jail after pleading guilty to trying to rob another young woman weeks before Schilling was found dead in June 1981.
Prosecutors told the jury that Gates had admitted killing and raping Schilling to a police informant, according to media reports at the time. Gates’ attorney said his arrest for trying to snatch a woman’s purse near where Schilling was found was the only reason he was charged with murdering Schilling.
Schilling’s naked body was found by her co-workers in a wooded area beneath the Whitehurst Freeway on June 23, 1981, media reports said. They had gone looking for her when the Georgetown senior failed to show up for her paralegal job in the Watergate Office Building.
They quickly found Schilling near a 300-foot trail she often took as a shortcut from work to her apartment. She had been shot five times and raped. Nearby, police found her clothes, books and wallet still holding cash.
The jury convicted Gates, partly relying on forensic evidence provided by an FBI analyst whose body of work has since been called into question.
Schilling was murdered amid a streak of deadly attacks on women in Rock Creek Park, much like those that occurred around the time intern Chandra Levy disappeared in the park in 2001. Those attacks continued after Gates was jailed.
Following his release Tuesday, Gates told the Associated Press that being free felt “beautiful.” He said his faith in God helped him get through his incarceration.
