Anthony Ross Houston pleaded guilty to raping two women at the same Atlanta apartment complex 48 hours apart in 1985, closing a case that sat unresolved for four decades until DNA testing on long-stored rape kits identified him as the attacker. Cynthia Hunt and Juanita Ransome were the victims, and both said Houston entered their ground-floor apartments through a window before assaulting them.
Houston's guilty plea, first reported by WSB-TV, came after DNA collected from Hunt's and Ransome's rape kits was tested against a national database containing profiles from convicted felons and other offenders, yielding a match to Houston. Ransome told the station that Houston threatened her and her daughter during the attack, and said, “Just call it evil,” describing what he did to her. Hunt said she had her 4-year-old daughter in bed with her when Houston broke in, and told the outlet that his conviction brought her healing and ensures he can never hurt anyone else again.
A Cold Case Frozen for Decades
The rapes of Hunt and Ransome were never solved at the time, but Houston was convicted in 1987 of a separate rape involving a mother and daughter and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, according to the station's report. A related multi-count indictment tied to the pattern of rapes — including the assaults on Hunt and Ransome — was placed on the dead docket the year after that life sentence, a procedural move under Georgia law that postpones prosecution indefinitely without dismissing the charges, leaving cases legally pending and callable for trial at a judge's discretion, according to a University of Georgia School of Law Digital Commons analysis of the statute. Another victim testified at Houston's original trial to help establish a pattern of conduct involving rape, and he was indicted at the time for raping that witness, three other rapes, and an attempted rape, per the same account.
The case might have stayed frozen if not for a 2015 discovery that 1,351 untested sexual assault kits had been sitting at Grady Memorial Hospital for decades because police had never collected them for testing, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The hospital had reportedly held onto the kits under a mistaken belief that federal privacy rules barred handing them over without explicit release forms. That backlog eventually became the foundation for the testing that identified Houston decades after the attacks.
Federal Grant Fueled the Testing Push
In September 2023, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced a $2.5 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's Sexual Assault Kit Initiative to process and test a backlog of 4,342 unexamined rape kits, most dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, according to 11Alive. Willis said the grant helped pay for testing hundreds of sexual assault kits and covered prosecution expenses, and the funding allowed her office to double its cold-case unit by bringing on two dedicated Atlanta Police Department detectives, per that report. Once tested, eligible DNA profiles from those kits could be entered into the FBI's Combined DNA Index System and compared with other profiles.
The case was revived from the dead docket decades after the attacks.
Parole, an Ankle Monitor, and an Arrest
Houston made parole in 2022, but he cut off his ankle monitor and lived under an assumed name before he was ultimately arrested on the cold-case rapes, per WSB-TV's reporting. His parole was revoked following his arrest on the Hunt and Ransome cases.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause sentenced Houston to 45 years in prison.
Part of a Wider Statewide Reckoning
Houston's case fits into a much larger pattern across Georgia. Georgia has undertaken statewide efforts to test backlogged rape kits. State law addresses the processing of sexual-assault kits.
The Fulton County DA's Sexual Assault Kit Initiative unit reported a 100% conviction rate in prosecuted cold-case sexual assaults as of December 2025, a performance the office attributed in part to co-locating two Atlanta Police Department officers directly inside the unit to accelerate investigations and witness contact. Metro Atlanta has seen similar cold-case DNA prosecutions in recent months — Hoodline reported this week that DeKalb County prosecutors used cold-case DNA testing to link an in-custody murder suspect to two unsolved sexual assaults dating back to December 2014.
For Ransome, the resolution came with a message she shared through WSB-TV: justice was served, even 40 years later. Hunt echoed that sentiment, telling the station that Houston's imprisonment has brought her a measure of healing and guarantees he can no longer hurt anyone else.
