Theopulus Gordon could have prevented the death of Eric Robinson last September, but he didn’t.FORT WAYNE – A man already in prison stepped forward unexpectedly Friday to claim responsibility for a heinous 2003 crime that stumped frustrated investigators and haunted a neighborhood.
On Friday afternoon, Dorris William Merriweather III, formerly of the 4000 block of Hessen Cassel Road, pleaded guilty to attempted murder and two counts of child molesting, all Class A felonies.
He had been scheduled to appear in court Friday but not for a plea hearing.
As part of a plea agreement, charges of burglary, criminal confinement and a third count of child molesting would be dropped.
The plea agreement calls for Merriweather, 38, to serve 75 years in prison. It will be up to Allen Superior Court Judge John Surbeck at a July 30 hearing to accept the agreement and decide whether the sentence for the 2003 crime should be served at the same time or after a 45-year prison sentence Merriweather is already serving.
Merriweather is serving 45 years for sexually assaulting a young girl in 2007 and 2008, a conviction that is credited for Merriweather’s guilty plea in the 2003 case.
The cold case turned hot in February, when an Indiana State Police DNA analyst made a surprising discovery: Merriweather’s DNA, taken as standard procedure when he entered prison, was consistent with a sample taken from a girl assaulted in Fort Wayne in 2003.
That 5-year-old girl was sleeping in her bedroom on a cool April night when a man sneaked in – allegedly the 5-foot-5, 175-pound Merriweather – scooped her up and took her to a blue van outside.
At 6:41 a.m., she was found by a man who called police at the sight of the mud-caked little girl with debris in her hair, wearing only a dirty shirt and pleading incoherently for her mother.
Court documents piece together the grim details of the horrifying 3 1/2 hours in between:
In the words of a child, she told police of the very adult acts committed by the man who took her from her home, put her in a van, drove her to the woods and left her for dead. He raped her and choked her “until she went to sleep.”
Her injuries required surgery, court documents said.
In 2003, detectives involved with the case – then 5 months old, with no leads – spoke to The Journal Gazette about their frustration.
They fruitlessly patrolled an area south of Adams Elementary on New Haven Avenue, knocking door-to-door in a 10-block radius, searching garages and inventorying car dealers for a blue van.
A DNA comparison to a national database yielded no results, and a program on local Crime Stoppers prompted no tips.
The resident who found the girl in 2003 spoke to The Journal Gazette then on condition his name not be used.
“I will never forget her face,” he said. “It broke me and my wife’s heart. Thank God (the girl) trusted me.”
Police at the time worried the attacker would strike again – fears that would prove to be founded. Merriweather was convicted by an Allen County jury in September of molesting a girl who was 7 or 8 years old when the abuse occurred in 2007 and 2008.
The girl told police Merriweather would sometimes pretend to be a doctor before abusing her. Her grandmother took her to a hospital minutes after the girl told her of the abuse, according to testimony from that trial.
