A Washington deacon accused of raping and stabbing to death a Frenchwoman in a Glover Park town home more than two decades ago will testify at his trial this week that the sex was consensual and that he didn’t kill her, his defense attorney said.
Melvin Jackson Jr. of the 1700 block of Trinidad Avenue Northeast is on trial this week for allegedly stabbing Raymonde Plantiveau 21 times in the back Dec. 1, 1983. Jackson was a deacon at Sonship Church Center, according to court documents.
In 2004, the FBI matched DNA samples taken from the victim’s body to Jackson’s DNA after D.C. police recovered a box of evidence from the case that had been buried in an old police warehouse. Jackson’s subsequent arrest was the first time that D.C. police have charged a suspect using DNA evidence from such an old homicide case.
Plantiveau was visiting from France when, late in the afternoon of Dec. 1, 1983, someone entered through the back door of her daughter’s town home on 39th Street NW and found the 57-year-old Plantiveau napping in bed. The perpetrator raped Plantiveau, stabbed her and fled with jewelry and a wallet, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle A. Zamarin told the jury Monday.
In his opening statement, Jackson’s attorney, Ross D. Hecht, pointed out that two of the three boxes of evidence collected from the crime scene that day were “lost” by D.C. police. Evidence contained within the lost boxes included hair samples and the knife used to kill Plantiveau, he said.
The police department’s storage system was poorly organized and “no one thought about DNA evidence back then,” said Detective James Trainum of the Violent Crime Case Review Project.
But the box that Trainum recovered from the Southeast D.C. warehouse contained enough evidence for a conviction, he said. It was a swab of dried semen that eventually linked Jackson to the crime.
“Nothing linked my client to this terrible crime,” Hecht said. “My client had consensual relations with [Plantiveau] long before her expiration.”
Medical examiners, police officers, Plantiveau’s daughter and a criminal who admittedly taught Jackson how to rob houses are some of the witnesses expected to testify this week. Jackson is charged with burglary, robbery, rape, and premeditated first-degree murder.
