A 61-year-old man will face 10 to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to the 1993 rape at knifepoint of an 11-year-old girl, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. announced Monday.

William Dixon, pleaded guilty earlier this month to one count of criminal sexual act in the first degree, Vance said.

Dixon was initially indicted in 2017 and charged with sodomy following a recent DNA cold case hit, for the February 1993 knifepoint sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl in Hamilton Heights, prosecutors previously said. Dixon was charged in a New York State Supreme Court indictment with Sodomy in the First and Second Degrees.

According to court documents and statements made on the record in court, on Feb. 17, 1993, Dixon allegedly approached an 11-year-old girl in the hallway of a Hamilton Heights apartment building, he then allegedly pulled her hat over her eyes, held a knife to her throat and forced her to the building’s rooftop, where he sexually assaulted her.

Prosecutors say that the young victim then went to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center following the attack, where the elements of a sexual assault evidence kit, or “rape kit,” were collected.

In 2002, a DNA profile developed from the victim’s rape kit as part of New York City’s Rape Kit Backlog Project was uploaded to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), but did not match a preexisting DNA profile, prosecutors said citing court documents. Because of this, the district attorney’s office presented the criminal case to a New York Supreme Court Grand Jury in 2003, obtaining a “John Doe” indictment listing the perpetrator by his DNA profile.

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Subsequently, in January 2017, Dixon pleaded guilty to raping a 12-year-old girl in the Bronx in November 2016. Following that conviction, his DNA profile was entered into CODIS, and matched the DNA profile listed on the Manhattan “John Doe” indictment.

“This case – a brutal sex assault on an 11-year-old girl – underscores the importance of ending the national rape kit backlog by testing every kit,” Vance said in a statement. “For more than two decades, William Dixon evaded law enforcement while this young victim agonized over whether her assailant would ever be held accountable. But thanks to the groundbreaking work of my office’s Sex Crimes and Forensic Sciences Units as well as our resolve to test every kit, the defendant has finally been brought to justice and will serve a lengthy sentence for his horrific crime.”