WYOMING, Mich. — A man was sentenced on Monday for abducting, sexually assaulting and then abandoning a 4-year-old girl in Kent County back in 2002.
On Monday, Richard Adams was sentenced to 135 months-30 years in prison. He will be serving time for kidnapping, as well as first- and second-degree criminal sexual conduct.
Back on August 8, 2002, Wyoming police say a 4-year-old girl was kidnapped from her apartment, sexually assaulted, and abandoned in the north part of Kent County.
Police say DNA was recovered from the victim. For 18 years, investigators worked to identify the suspect. Police say all leads ran into dead ends and the case was eventually declared a cold case.
Then, on November 9, 2020, Michigan State Police reached out to Wyoming police for a DNA match for a suspect who had recently been arrested in Allegan County.
According to Wyoming police, investigators determined the man had worked at the apartment complex where the child was abducted from up until one week before the crime.
Investigators were able to track the suspect to a location in Grand Rapids, where he was arrested on November 19, 2020. Further testing confirmed DNA from Adams matched the DNA collected from the victim in 2002.
At the sentencing, the victim addressed Adams in the courtroom. "I want to first start this off by saying, 'I forgive you,'" the victim said.
The victim went on to say, "I convinced that he was dead and clearly he is not and this is better than him being dead, but now you're going to go down for what you did to me."
