In a significant development in a nearly three-decade-old cold case, 60-year-old Robert Daniel Shelton, from Hickory, North Carolina, has been sentenced to 30 years imprisonment after pleading guilty to a 1994 rape charge. This case dates back to December 1994, when a 19-year-old woman was abducted in Owensboro and forced to drive to Indiana where she was sexually assaulted. The breakthrough came in 2022 when DNA evidence submitted to the CODIS system identified Shelton as the assailant. Shelton’s DNA was on file due to a separate 1996 conviction in Kentucky.