Indicting John Doe

On a night in 1994, Patricia Young of Nashville, Tennessee was asleep in her bed when she was startled awake by a masked man who had broken into her house. The man, undressed from the waist down, brutally attacked Young and attempted to rape her. Young, an attorney, put up a fierce struggle, biting off a piece of his finger. Eventually the man left, but not before sexually violating Young with his hands.

Fifteen years later, DNA evidence taken from the bitten flesh were matched to a man who had already been convicted as a serial rapist. By then, the state statute of limitations in the case had run out, but Young managed to get her attacker on trial because she used a rare legal move to indict “John Doe” based on the DNA evidence. Young, who is in North Carolina to speak to an audience at the Durham Crisis Response Center, joins host Frank Stasio to talk about the tragic attack she suffered and the unique path she took to bringing her assailant to justice.