The 1975 rape and killing of an 88-year-old Emporia woman may have been solved by a pioneering DNA project aimed at clearing people wrongly convicted decades ago.

Thomas Pope Jr., 53, of Emporia was arrested yesterday and charged with rape and first-degree murder in the Jan. 2, 1975, death of Eva King Jones, a retired teacher attacked in her home across North Main Street from the police station.

DNA testing of evidence found in forensic case files that led to convictions from 1973 through 1988 was ordered in 2005 by then-Gov. Mark R. Warner after five men wrongly convicted of rape were cleared by testing of some of the old biological material.

Analysis showed that the "DNA evidence preserved in this particular case file has been attributed to Pope," Virginia State Police said in a statement. As a convicted sex offender, Pope was required to submit a DNA sample for the state's DNA databank.

Pope was convicted in Richmond in 1991 of abduction and forcible sodomy. According to news accounts at the time, he was living in South Richmond when he abducted and assaulted a 9-year-old girl.

Details about the evidence and its case file were not available from the state forensics laboratory or from authorities yesterday.

Tom Gasparoli, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, said in an e-mail: "It is my understanding that we let both the state police and the commonwealth's attorney know of these findings within the last two weeks."

Most of the files in the study were those of a former state forensic serologist, Mary Jane Burton, who died in 1999. However, other scientists also saved swabs and pieces of material containing blood, semen or other biological evidence in their files.

Emporia resident Curtis Jasper Moore, who suffered from schizophrenia, was convicted of Jones' murder in 1978 after a mental-health commitment to Central State Hospital. The conviction was overturned on appeal, and authorities did not retry him.

According to a Jan. 8, 1981, ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Moore implicated himself while being questioned by police. Among other things, the court held that because of his mental health, Moore could not have intelligently waived his rights.

News accounts said Moore told police he had been in Jones' home and attacked and raped her but that he denied killing her. Police said at the time that Moore was living in Skippers and had been released from a mental-health hospital in Washington two weeks before Jones was killed.

The appeals court ruled: "We think that the local police completely deprived Moore of the procedural safeguards that Miranda was designed to provide," referring to the Supreme Court ruling that requires authorities to inform suspects of their constitutional rights.

State police said Moore died of natural causes about four years ago.

According to news accounts at the time, Jones, a widow who lived alone, was able to call police and report she had been raped, robbed, stabbed and choked. Police found her partially clothed and sitting in a chair gasping for breath. She died later at a hospital.

A Feb. 18, 1975, report that appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch read in part: "The warrant [charging Moore] reportedly is based on evidence local police have received from the state crime laboratory in Richmond."

State police said yesterday that when the agency was notified of the recent DNA testing results, authorities immediately reopened the case, resulting in Pope's arrest. Pope, of the 700 block of South Main Street in Emporia, was being held at Southside Regional Jail last night. Police said the investigation continues.
Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or fgreen@timesdispatch.com.