CANYON COUNTY, Idaho — This story originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
The man who was convicted of raping and killing a 9-year-old Nampa girl has been sentenced to life in prison.
David Dalrymple, who was found guilty of the 1982 crimes, will serve two consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole, the Canyon County Prosecutor's Office announced Friday. The state did not seek the death penalty.
Dalrymple, 66, was convicted by a Canyon County jury in June of raping and killing Daralyn Johnson, who went missing on Feb. 21, 1982, while she was on her way to school in Nampa. Her remains were found three days later in a shallow drainage ditch along the Snake River in Melba. She had been sexually assaulted and sustained blunt force trauma to her head and torso before dying from drowning.
District Judge Thomas Whitney, during Dalrymple's sentencing on Friday, said Dalrymple's crimes were “heinous in the extreme,” that he was a “a remorseless, repeat, violent sexual abuser of children ... incapable of rehabilitation,” and that only a life sentence without parole could secure “even a reasonable probability that he would not rape or murder a young girl again," the release states.
“The road to justice has been a long journey,” Canyon County Prosecuting Attorney Bryan Taylor said in the release. “After 42 years the Johnson family can finally have closure that the man who took their precious daughter from them will remain behind bars for the rest of his life.”
Dalrymple is currently serving a 20 years-to-life sentence for his 2004 conviction of kidnapping, lewd conduct and sexual abuse involving a minor between the age of 9 and 11 in a separate, Ada County case. He wasn’t charged with Johnson’s murder until May 2020, nearly four decades after her death. A different man, Charles Fain, who was a neighbor of Johnson and her family, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to the death penalty in 1983.
However, Fain, who always maintained his innocence, was exonerated and released from prison 18 years later, in 2001, after DNA testing found the hairs on Johnson’s remains didn’t belong to him, according to previous Idaho Press reporting.
The same science that was used to free Fain helped investigators tie the crime to Dalrymple.
Hairs found on Johnson’s remains were sent to a lab in California in 2018 and ultimately traced to Dalrymple’s family through genetic genealogy.
He was questioned by police for the first time in February 2020 and, in late April of that year, DNA found on Johnson’s remains was found to identically match a DNA sample taken from Dalrymple.
Dalrymple pleaded not guilty to the charges in October 2022. His jury trial began on May 13 and lasted 29 days, online court records show.
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.