A DeKalb County grand jury has indicted a 42-year-old Florida man on rape, aggravated sodomy and kidnapping charges tied to a 2016 attack in Clarkston, after investigators say DNA evidence connected him to the case through a national crime database nearly a decade later. Julius Hunter was arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on August 13 and extradited to DeKalb County, where he now sits in jail without bond awaiting arraignment before Superior Court Judge Tangela Barrie.
According to FOX 5 Atlanta, the grand jury handed down the indictment on August 11, alleging Hunter lured a 19-year-old woman with a Craigslist ad before kidnapping and raping her. The case traces back to July 27, 2016, when a teenager answered a Craigslist ad offering $300 for an overnight babysitting job in Clarkston. The ad poster arranged a rideshare vehicle to deliver her to an apartment complex near 700 Jolly Avenue, where she found two men waiting and no children in sight.
A Teenager's Ordeal and a Cold Case Kit
Per preliminary investigation details described in the report, Hunter assaulted and raped the teenager over the following hours before releasing her the next day, July 28, 2016. The victim asked a cab driver to call 911 and was taken to a hospital for a sexual assault examination. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed male DNA was present in her sexual assault kit in 2017, but the profile initially yielded no match in the national Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS.
The case sat unresolved until the GBI matched that same DNA profile to an unidentified perpetrator in two other cold cases out of DeKalb and Gwinnett counties, both dating to 2016 and 2017. All three Georgia sexual-assault kits ultimately matched through CODIS, the station's report notes, but the perpetrator's identity remained unknown until Florida authorities collected Hunter's DNA following a 2021 felony sexual battery conviction there. Under Florida law, the same statute cited by the Florida Senate sets out DNA-sample collection and transmission requirements.
A Pattern of Fake Job Listings
The perpetrator behind the three matched Georgia cases used Craigslist ads for babysitting, modeling, dancing and massage jobs to lure victims, per the same account, with some meeting him at the same Jolly Avenue apartment complex in Clarkston. Investigators say Hunter was linked to the 2016 Clarkston attack specifically through the DNA match described above. Craigslist would go on to shut down its Personals section nationwide in March 2018 after Congress passed the FOSTA-SESTA legislation altering platform liability for sex-trafficking-related ads, according to Business Insider.
Two Victims Still Unaccounted For
Investigators have not yet connected with the victims in the two matching DeKalb and Gwinnett cold cases from 2016 and 2017, and officials say they do not know whether Hunter committed additional unknown assaults elsewhere in the region. The DeKalb County District Attorney's Office is urging anyone with information, or anyone who may have been victimized by Hunter, to call its tip line at 404-371-2444.
The case falls under the umbrella of the Georgia Sexual Assault Kit Initiative Task Force, which was formed in 2018 and combines prosecutors, investigators and victim advocates working alongside the GBI crime lab, according to the DeKalb County District Attorney's Office. The task force grew out of Georgia's statewide reckoning with untested rape kits. Lawmakers responded in 2016 with Senate Bill 304, which required local agencies to inventory and submit all unanalyzed rape kits to the GBI for testing.
Prior SAKI Cases Set the Template
DeKalb's SAKI unit has notched other cold-case wins using the same CODIS-matching approach. In 2023, DNA matches identified two brothers in connection with a series of 1980s rapes in Brookhaven and Buford Highway, a case that led to a jury conviction of defendant Jeffrey Briney in September 2025, per 11Alive's earlier reporting. More recently, in March 2026, prosecutors secured a guilty plea and life sentence against serial assailant Wesley Cooley in a case involving 10 cold-case assaults across DeKalb, Fulton and Rockdale counties dating from 1999 to 2017, with the Journal-Constitution noting Cooley used deceptive offers of transportation and assistance to isolate his victims.
Hunter faces severe exposure if convicted. Under Georgia law, forcible rape carries potential penalties ranging from a mandatory minimum of 25 years followed by probation to life imprisonment without parole, since it is classified among the state's most serious violent felonies. Aggravated sodomy is also among the charges. Judge Barrie will determine when Hunter's trial date is set.
