Today (April 19, 2023) an Anchorage grand jury indicted 55-year-old Guy Allan Nelson on two counts of sexual assault in the first degree and one count of sexual assault in the second degree. Nelson is charged with sexually assaulting a 34-year-old woman in a vehicle off the Glenn Highway in July 2005.
Investigative efforts to identify a suspect in 2005 were unsuccessful and the case went cold.
In 2022, the sexual assault kit collected in the case was tested as part of the Capital Project, a State-funded initiative to test and analyze all untested sexual assault kits collected by 47 police departments statewide. The kit results identified a potential suspect through a DNA match. The Anchorage Police Department’s Cold Case Unit reopened the case and conducted additional investigation. The Department of Law’s Office of Special Prosecutions presented the matter to the grand jury.
Nelson was previously convicted in 1995 of sexual assault in the first degree in Kenai. Testimony at grand jury documented Nelson had been released on parole in that case only several weeks before the alleged 2005 sexual assault.
If convicted at trial, Nelson faces a sentence of up to 30 years imprisonment.
Arraignment for Nelson in Anchorage Superior Court was scheduled for Friday April 21, 2023, at 10:00am.
This is the fifth case the Office of Special Prosecutions has indicted based on new evidence obtained through the Capital Project. The other four cases are Ronald Wade Fischer (3AN-23-2333), Lawrence Lekanoff (3AN-23-01363CR), David Joseph Ulroan (3AN-22-09396CR) and Michael James Williams (1KE-21-00416CR). Additional cases have been charged based on new evidence obtained from the Capital Project testing across the state by other prosecutors.
There have been at least three SAKI cases (where kits were tested based on a federally funded grant) charged by the Office of Special Prosecutions, in addition to those Capital Project cases.
All of the charges against Nelson are only allegations and are not evidence of guilt. All defendants are presumed innocent and are entitled to a fair trial at which the prosecution must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
