Wake Forest, NC, man charged in 1986 death of Jessica Gutierrez, 4, in Lexington, SC
A North Carolina man was arrested Thursday morning and charged in the abduction and death of 4-year-old Jessica Gutierrez, who was taken from her home in Lexington, S.C., more than 35 years ago.
The case had gone unsolved since Jessica disappeared from her home June 6, 1986. Federal and South Carolina law enforcement officials arrived in Lexington County in September to continue investigating the case.
Debra Gutierrez, Jessica’s mother, said Friday that she felt relief when she found out that someone had finally been charged in her daughter’s disappearance.
”I’m glad God brought me to see it,” she said. “I prayed he would bring me through it, and we’ve waited for this a long time.”
Thomas Eric McDowell, 61, was taken into custody Thursday at 7:50 a.m. at his North White Street home in Wake Forest, N.C., by Wake Forest police officers. He is charged with murder, kidnapping and first-degree burglary in connection with Jessica’s disappearance, the Lexington County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
McDowell is being held at the Wake County Detention Center in Raleigh on no bond, according to county inmate records. In a court hearing Friday in Wake County, N.C., a district court judge said McDowell would remain in jail without bond until he is extradited to South Carolina.
In 1986, Debra Gutierrez woke up to a parent’s nightmare. Her daughter wasn’t in her room and a window was open. The child’s sister said that a man “with the magic hat and the beard took her last night.”
Police investigated the girl’s abduction for decades but no charges were brought before Thursday. The case was reviewed in 2008 and 2015.
“We took a fresh look at this case in September when FBI special agents and analysts assigned to its Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team and prosecutors with the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office came to Lexington,” said Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon.
Arrest warrants confirm that investigators have not found the young girl’s body.
Agents with the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division also assisted with the investigation, Koon said, and helped review initial reports and interview more than 125 people. In total, agents reviewed more than 3,500 case file pages in September, and 10 FBI field offices were involved.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, the state’s top law enforcement official, commended investigators and prosecutors from his office for their “tireless efforts” on the case.
“Without this newly discovered information our office would not be able to prosecute this case.”
What happened to Jessica Gutierrez?
Debra Gutierrez previously told The State that she had thought of several different potential suspects through the years. Weeks after the girl went missing, a man living in Lexington County, SC, who was a family acquaintance stole a van and drove to North Carolina, where he raped a woman, she said.
He was charged and later convicted and sent to prison. The man later confessed in prison that he had kidnapped a girl in Lexington County. He said he was wearing a tall cowboy when he took the girl.
Gutierrez told The State newspaper then, and in 2017, that investigators questioned the man about her daughter’s abduction. He offered to tell all in exchange for immunity, but his offer was denied, investigators told her.
A spokesperson for the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department would not say Thursday whether McDowell was the imprisoned man who reportedly confessed to kidnapping a Lexington girl.
McDowell is currently listed on a sex offender registry maintained by SLED, the South Carolina agency, for an offense committed in North Carolina that he was convicted of in March 1987.
At the time, McDowell was convicted of second-degree rape and criminal sexual conduct in the second degree and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to North Carolina incarceration records.
Warrants shed light
A fingerprint of McDowell’s was found in the home where Jessica was abducted, according to warrants.
That’s one detail from three arrest warrants issued for McDowell.
The State spoke with Debra Gutierrez at her home on Friday. She said when she learned that McDowell’s fingerprints had matched those found at her then-home, she knew McDowell was who had taken her daughter.
”I knew his were the only ones (on the window) because I used to clean those windows every night,” she told The State.
McDowell was also picked out of a photo lineup as the kidnapper, the warrants say. The documents don’t say who picked the photo from the lineup, but Jessica’s then-6-year-old sister was in the room when the girl was kidnapped.
Also, McDowell “made statements to other sources that he had kidnapped (Jessica Gutierrez) and killed her,” the warrants say.
The warrants don’t indicate when the fingerprint was connected to McDowell nor when he was identified in the photo lineup. It’s unclear from the warrants what evidence led to McDowell’s arrest Thursday about 250 miles from where Jessica Gutierrez was abducted.
Lexington County Sheriff’s Department investigator David Pritchard, who for years has been the lead detective on the case, signed the warrants.
In Wake Forest, Tony Parker, who lives down the street and works at a nearby convenience store, said the day after McDowell’s arrest that he had seen him around the neighborhood for at least the last six or seven years.
In that time, McDowell would keep to himself and didn’t talk to others, Parker said. Parker said McDowell drove a white pickup truck and was usually seen leaving his home in the morning and coming back in the evening, not interacting with anyone.
What happens next?
Donnie Myers, who was Lexington County’s solicitor when Jessica went missing and reviewed evidence from the first investigation, said it “was great” that police finally made an arrest in the case.
McDowell will be prosecuted by the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office, Koon said. That office has held the case since February 2015.
After Thursday’s announcement of McDowell’s arrest, Koon said his office is looking forward to working with other law enforcement agencies “to get justice for Jessica’s family and, hopefully, bring her home.”
Gutierrez’s family has “been waiting a long time and we’re glad to be a part of another step in the process,” Koon said. “And the community support to the family and to those who’ve worked on this case has been invaluable. We know they’ll remember Jessica and stand with her family in the coming days.”
Eleventh Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard said Thursday morning that even though his office is not involved in the case, he will do what he can to make sure there is court space in the Lexington County courthouse for any hearings that might be held there.
“I’m elated they feel they have enough information to move forward,” Hubbard said.
The State Reporters Bristow Marchant and John Monk contributed to this story.
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This story was originally published January 6, 2022 at 6:22 PM with the headline "Wake Forest, NC, man charged in 1986 death of Jessica Gutierrez, 4, in Lexington, SC."
