WILLIAMSBURG — A 61-year-old Williamsburg man was sentenced Monday to serve 35 years and six months for rape in a cold case from 1987.
Richard Lee Gibson was already serving 35 years and six months of a life sentence for an unrelated abduction with the intent to defile case from 2022. On Monday, a judge sentenced him to life for the 1987 case, suspending all but 35 years and six months.
The sentences will be served concurrently. Williamsburg-James City County Commonwealth’s Attorney Nate Green said Gibson will likely die in prison due to his age.
The victim of Gibson’s rape in 1987 spoke at the sentencing hearing Monday. She tearfully took the stand, requesting that Gibson look at her while she spoke. He obliged, though the judge said he didn’t have to. The Virginia Gazette does not identify victims of sexual assault without their expressed permission.
“He’s extremely skilled at convincing women not to call the police,” she said. Then she told the judge, “He has to stay in prison. Please sentence him to these 30 years.”
Gibson’s victim expressed sorrow for him and the women he’s hurt, noting that she believed there was something wrong with Gibson that was making him commit these acts.
“You will never stop,” she said.
Police said a then-unknown assailant abducted the woman on Dec. 10, 1987, and committed “various sexual offenses” in a section of the Midlands Apartment Complex that was under construction.
An exhaustive investigation turned up few leads, and the case went unsolved. But advancements in DNA technology led to developments that enabled a Williamsburg/James City County grand jury to indict Gibson in March for numerous charges stemming from that night almost 40 years ago, according to a James City County news release.
On Aug. 4, 2023, the Virginia Department of Forensic Services told the county police department the DNA of the suspect in the cold case had come back matching that of Gibson.
Toward the end of March 2023, Gibson was extradited from Florida after fleeing unrelated criminal charges in Virginia. Gibson had taken a sailboat to Florida and was located after someone reported a suspicious person sailing on the Caloosahatchee River. Police had been searching for him since October 2022, when they obtained warrants charging him with unlawfully creating an image of another and possession of obscene items.
On March 20 of this year, a grand jury indicted Gibson for rape, abduction with intent to defile, two counts of inanimate object penetration, two counts of sodomy and aggravated sexual battery for his involvement in the Dec. 10, 1987 offense.
In court Monday, the victim said Gibson left her bleeding in an unknown apartment room that night in 1987. She said she didn’t know where she was, and she was left to walk naked through mud while missing a shoe.
“You almost ruined me,” she said, adding that she did not allow the experience to rule her, but helped people who were victims of gun violence. “I lived a life despite you, despite what you did.”
Earlier this year, police said they thought other cold cases involving Gibson could exist. Anyone with further information can contact the James City County Police Department at 757-253-1800.
Sam Schaffer, samuel.schaffer@virginiamedia.com, and Emma Henry, emma.henry@virginiamedia.com
