The second day of the retrial of a sexual assault cold case in Ottawa brought new evidence to light Wednesday that workers at a McDonald’s restaurant might have served a milk shake to the attacker minutes after he fled the crime scene on South Princeton Circle Drive.

Ralph Corey, a 52-year-old former truck driver from Arizona, is on trial for a second time in Franklin County District Court in connection with a 12-year-old sexual assault case after a mistrial was declared in July. Corey is accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Walmart Supercenter cashier on the night of Feb. 19, 2000, as she prepared to leave the employee parking lot on the north side of the building at 2101 S. Princeton St., Ottawa.

The second day of the retrial of a sexual assault cold case in Ottawa brought new evidence to light Wednesday that workers at a McDonald’s restaurant might have served a milk shake to the attacker minutes after he fled the crime scene on South Princeton Circle Drive.

Ralph Corey, a 52-year-old former truck driver from Arizona, is on trial for a second time in Franklin County District Court in connection with a 12-year-old sexual assault case after a mistrial was declared in July. Corey is accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Walmart Supercenter cashier on the night of Feb. 19, 2000, as she prepared to leave the employee parking lot on the north side of the building at 2101 S. Princeton St., Ottawa.

Corey faces two counts of aggravated sexual assault, one count of aggravated kidnapping, one count of attempted rape and one count of making a criminal threat in connection with the 2000 incident. All five counts are felonies.

The victim, the victim’s mother and stepfather, as well as a witness and several law enforcement officers involved in the initial investigation, took the witness stand Wednesday.

The reported victim of the attack, now in her late 20s and a wife and mother, recounted for a jury Wednesday how she was abducted from the Walmart parking lot and sexually assaulted after her work shift ended at about 8 p.m.

The woman relayed the events of that evening as she sat on the witness stand facing the man accused of the crimes alleged to have occurred more than 12 years ago. The Herald does not print the names of victims of sexual assault cases.

The victim said her attacker, who was described as having dark hair, a mustache and a medium build, struck her repeatedly in the face, put a black ski mask over her face and forced her into the back seat. The attacker then drove the girl’s car to the parking lot that is now Orscheln Farm & Home, 2008 S. Princeton St., where he attempted to rape her and sexually assaulted her, she said. Then the attacker drove the victim to the parking lot at Country Mart, 2138 S. Princeton Circle Drive, where a second sexual assault occurred before the attacker fled the scene, leaving the victim in her car, she said in her testimony.

Testimony Wednesday showed a subsequent investigation of the crime scene in the Country Mart parking lot led law enforcement officials to discover a person matching the description of the suspect entered a nearby McDonald’s and ordered a milk shake around the time of the incident, according to store employees. 

John A. Boyd, Corey’s defense attorney, pointed out law enforcement officials did not ask those McDonald’s employees to provide a description for a composite, nor did law enforcement ask McDonald’s management if surveillance tape of the store was available from that evening.

Though the victim could not positively identify Corey as her attacker in the courtroom Wednesday, she testified she did catch a glimpse of her attacker when he approached her car and later through a eyehole in the stocking cap. The victim was able to work with a detective from the University of Kansas Police Department in Lawrence to develop a composite of her attacker.

James T. Ward, assistant county prosecutor, presented a photograph taken of Corey in 2000 along with two composite sketches, which now-retired KU police Det. Mike Riner produced within 48 hours of the February 2000 attack from descriptions provided separately by the victim and a 15-year-old Walmart cashier, Tammy Smith, who said Corey had approached her vehicle minutes before the attack occurred against the victim. Ward placed the two composites and Corey’s 2000 photograph on an overhead projector for the jury to compare.

Boyd attempted to refute the prosecution’s contention the two composites were strikingly similar and bore a resemblance to the 2000 photograph of Corey.

Asking Riner to examine the two composites, Boyd asked in a series of questions if the detective would agree that the two girls did not select the same eyebrows, the same noses, the same mustaches, the same eyes, the same chins or the same skin tones.

Riner agreed with Boyd that none of those features were a match between the two composites. 

But he disagreed with Boyd that the shape of the two faces were not similar. The detective, who retired in 2009 after serving with the KU police force since 1977, said he thought the two faces were of similar shape.

“So they got the shape right?” Boyd asked.

“Yes,” Riner replied.

Boyd also tried to discredit witness Smith’s description of the attacker, saying she had told Riner she had seen the attacker from a distance of 30 feet, while she had told Bruce Hanson, an Ottawa police detective investigating the case, that the closest the attacker had come to her was 12 feet. Boyd said in earlier testimony Smith indicated the attacker was within 2 feet.

The Ottawa defense attorney asked Riner if he would agree that seeing a stranger from 30 feet in a dark parking lot in the middle of the night could affect a person’s ability to provide an accurate description.

Riner agreed with Boyd’s contention.

Boyd also pointed out that the composite drawings, when circulated as flyers throughout the Ottawa area in 2000, yielded at least 11 possible suspects and numerous other tips from the public.

During Boyd’s questioning, Hanson said the victim had been showed photo lineups of a dozen possible suspects within hours of the attack and more than 40 photos over a two-year period between 2000 and 2002. But the victim failed to identify any of those photographs as her attacker.

Ward countered by asking Hanson if he had a photograph of Corey to show to the victim during that 2000 to 2002 time frame.

“No,” Hanson said.

“Was Mr. Corey a suspect in 2000?” Ward asked.

“No, he was not,” Hanson said.

During a collection of the evidence from the victim’s tan four-door Nissan Maxima, Boyd asked if detectives had used a “blue light” to detect seminal fluids and other stains not visible by the ordinary eye.

Hanson said though that technology existed at the time, the Ottawa Police Department did not have access to it, to the best of his recollection.

Hanson said the department had asked the Kansas Bureau of Investigation crime lab to examine the car for evidence, but the lab declined that request.

“Did the KBI give you a reason?” Boyd asked.

“Not that I can recall,” Hanson said.

“Did you assume, then, that they were just too busy?” Boyd asked.

“Yes,” Hanson nodded.

Ward asked Hanson if the police department had widened its search beyond Ottawa — after local leads did not pan out — because it had put information about the case in a crime bank that served law enforcement agencies throughout the Midwest.

“Yes, our investigation led us to believe the suspect was a transient or a trucker passing through,” Hanson said.

The case had gone cold until DNA collected at the crime scene was matched with Corey’s DNA in the national Combined DNA Index System [CODIS] of solved and unsolved cases Nov. 8, 2010, as Corey was about to be released from an Arizona penitentiary on counterfeiting charges. Corey was arrested June 17, 2011, by Ottawa police officers on a Franklin County warrant and transferred to the Franklin County Adult Detention Center, 305 S. Main St., Ottawa. He remains in jail on $500,000 bond.

Stephen A. Hunting, Franklin County attorney, planned to introduce that DNA evidence when the trial resumed at 9 a.m. today.

A jury of six men and six women deliberated June 21 for about 2 hours and 20 minutes before finding Corey guilty on all five counts in Franklin County District Court. Judge Eric W. Godderz declared a mistrial in July after evidence came to light that one of the jurors had used his smartphone to obtain outside information about the trial — information that was used during the jury’s deliberations, which is not allowed.