In the spring of 2015, the story of David Dore, a 47-year-old male from Houma, Louisiana, came to a startling and tragic end. On April 7, 2015, Dore took his own life. His death occurred just as he was about to face a trial for a brutal crime that had remained a mystery for nearly three decades.
Years earlier, in 1986, a 30-year-old woman in Abbeville, Louisiana, had been the victim of an aggravated rape.
For 29 long years, the case went unsolved, the perpetrator's identity a lingering question for law enforcement. The break in the case came unexpectedly. In 2011, David Dore was involved in a separate criminal matter in the Houma area, which resulted in his DNA being collected and entered into a national database. This routine procedure yielded a startling match, linking Dore directly to the evidence collected from the 1986 rape.
Following this DNA match, David Dore was arrested and formally charged with the aggravated rape. The wheels of justice, which had been still for so long, began to turn, and a trial was set. However, before he could stand before a jury to answer for the cold case crime, Dore chose to end his own life, closing the final chapter on a dark and long-hidden secret.
