A Knoxville man pled guilty and received prison time for a 2008 sexual assault that took place in Marion County.

James Michael Murphy of Knoxville pled guilty to two counts 3rd degree sexual abuse, class C felonies, as part of an agreement in court Thursday.

Murphy received 10 years of prison for each charge, to run consecutively with each other and the current time he’s serving for a separate case in Decatur County. According to court records, Murphy also received a special sentence that places him in the custody of the Director of the Iowa Department of Corrections for life with eligibility for parole. If parole or work release is granted, he must also register as a sex offender.

Murphy’s arrest in January 2016 was connected to an August 2008 Marion County Sheriff’s Office investigation, in which a female arrived at a local emergency room reporting she was abducted at knife point, taken to another location, and sexually assaulted by an unknown male assailant.

The victim submitted to a sexual assault examination, in which DNA evidence was collected. In 2014, a different sexual assault report was taken in another Iowa county where the assailant was identified as Murphy. His DNA profile was entered into the CODIS DNA database, and police say his was a match to the profile identified in the Marion County 2008 sexual assault.
In December 2015, the Marion County Sheriff’s office says a report was generated by the DCI laboratory stating “the probability of finding this profile in a population of unrelated individuals, chosen at random, would be less than 1 out of 100 billion.”