A 63-year-old Anchorage man was sentenced Wednesday to spend 60 years in prison for a 2007 cold-case sexual assault that investigators solved using DNA analysis.
Anthony Dillard was convicted in 2019 after being accused of luring a woman into an alley behind The Avenue Bar in downtown Anchorage and sexually assaulting her as another man restrained her.
The woman was assaulted in 2007, but the case went cold for several years before Dillard was identified as a suspect in 2010, when his DNA profile was matched to evidence found at the scene, police said at the time. He’s been in custody since.
Dillard was first tried in 2014, but the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision and the case ended in a mistrial. He was eventually convicted of first-degree sexual assault in 2019 after a bench trial.
All told, the case took 14 years to reach Wednesday’s hearing, where Anchorage Superior Court Judge Andrew Peterson sentenced Dillard to 60 years in prison.
Dillard was also indicted in 2010 for a 2005 assault where he also did not know the victim, according to a sentencing memorandum written by Assistant District Attorney Rebecca Weiant. In both the 2005 and 2007 assaults, Dillard ”targeted female victims who were intoxicated, vulnerable, and alone outside of a bar,” Weiant wrote. He did not know either of the women, she said.
Those charges were ultimately dismissed. Prosecutors presented evidence during the 2019 bench trial, however, that the conduct in the 2005 case should be counted as an aggravating factor for sentencing in the 2007 sexual assault.