’80 DNA leads to murder conviction

By JOE LAMBE

Dorothy Fisher died horribly 26 years ago — bound, sexually assaulted, tortured and strangled. It was years before DNA testing was discovered, but police saved the evidence.

Her hard fight for her life finally told who killed her. Two years ago DNA from skin under a fingernail matched that of paroled rapist Dawud Abdelmalik.

On Thursday, a Jackson County jury convicted the Kansas City man of capital murder.

The only possible sentence is life without parole. Abdelmalik, 45, killed Fisher sometime between Aug. 9 and Aug. 12, 1980.

Police found the 22-year-old woman dead in her apartment in the 1300 block of East Armour Boulevard.

She was on her stomach with her hands and feet bound behind her and a cloth tied around her neck. She had been sexually assaulted with a broom handle.

One of her teeth and a broken fingernail were found beneath her body.

DNA from skin under another fingernail matched that of Abdelmalik with certainty — a one-in-a-billion chance that her assailant could be anyone else.

In closing arguments, however, defense attorney Dan Ross said the DNA proved nothing.

He noted that the midtown victim lived near a boutique his client operated. Ross suggested she could have bought items there and used her fingernail to scrape off the adhesive price stickers that Abdelmalik put on the items.

“Under the left fingernail does not add up to murder,” Ross said.

Assistant Prosecutor Ted Hunt countered that there was no evidence that the victim had gone to the boutique and that if she had, there was no way a price tag would leave that much DNA.

“It must have been a pretty lumpy price tag with all that flesh under it,” Hunt said.

The simple evidence provided a sure and simple answer, Hunt said. “She solved her own murder by ultimately giving police her killer’s own flesh and blood.”

Abdelmalik was paroled in 2002 after serving 18 years for attacks on two other Kansas City women.

In one of those crimes, he sexually assaulted a woman, cut her, burned her and left her tied up.

Because of that attack, his DNA went into a database of felons, where police got their match in the Fisher case.