SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. — After 32 years, David L. Stephens has been sentenced in the murder of Judith Elaine Doherty after a judge decided he will get life in prison Wednesday.
On the morning of July 31, 1988, a jogger found the body of then 23-year-old Judith Doherty in a field and called the Sarasota Police Department. Police said her body had been beaten, sexually battered and that she had been strangled to death.
But at the time, the DNA technology that exists today was not available. So, 30 years later, in 2018, the police department sent "evidentiary items of value" to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to be tested.
That's when they say DNA found at the crime scene linked Stephens to the murder.
DNA evidence that Assistant State Attorney, Karen Fraivilling calls a "silent witness" after all these years.
“In this case, DNA evidence was the silent witness for 32 years. Judith Doherty’s brutal sexual battery and death remained unsolved, yet the silent witness was always there to tell its story," she said.
"David Stephens’ DNA under Ms. Doherty’s fingernails linked him to her murder and showed how valiantly she struggled to loosen the grip of her killer’s hands from around her throat."
Stephens has been in prison at the DeSoto Correctional Institution in Arcadia on charges of armed sexual battery and burglary related to a 1989 crime. He was scheduled to be released in July 2021.
“The life sentence given to David L. Stephens brings closure to this case and comfort to the Doherty family, knowing that Stephens will never victimize anyone else,” Detective Anthony DeFrancisco of the Sarasota Police Department said.
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