The jurors’ faces were different, but the outcome was the same.

A jury Monday afternoon found Ralph E. Corey guilty on all five felony counts in connection with a 12-year-old sexual assault case in Ottawa.

The jurors’ faces were different, but the outcome was the same.

A jury Monday afternoon found Ralph E. Corey guilty on all five felony counts in connection with a 12-year-old sexual assault case in Ottawa.

The 53-year-old former truck driver from Arizona was convicted a second time 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 was convicted of 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.

The victim hugged her husband and kissed her mother as Judge Eric W. Godderz read the jury’s guilty verdicts on all five counts about 3:20 p.m. Monday in Franklin County District Court.

Standing beside his defense attorney John A. Boyd, Corey showed no emotion as the judge read the five guilty verdicts, rendered by a jury of eight women and four men.

Jurors deliberated about 4-1/2 hours Friday afternoon before court recessed for the weekend. The jury resumed deliberations about 9:30 a.m. Monday, breaking for about an hour at 1 p.m. to listen to the court reporter read back testimony given last Thursday afternoon by Dana Soderholm, Kansas Bureau of Investigation forensics scientist, who had conducted DNA testing on three swabs of the victim’s belly, which were collected by law enforcement shortly after the attack.

Soderholm had testified the partial DNA profile obtained from one of the swabs could not exclude Corey as the donor. It was one of multiple pieces of DNA evidence presented at the trial.

Jurors, who had asked questions Monday about Soderholm’s testimony, resumed deliberations about 2 p.m. and reached unanimous verdicts on all five counts a little more than an hour later.

Godderz set Corey’s sentencing for 2:30 p.m. Dec. 11 in Franklin County District Court.

Stephen A. Hunting, Franklin County attorney, said afterward Corey probably would face 24 years to 37 years in prison, depending on the convicted man’s prior criminal history and if the judge set the sentences to run consecutively or concurrently.

“Obviously, we are very pleased with the outcome,” Hunting said in the hallway outside the courtroom, moments after he had given the victim a hug and shaken hands with James T. Ward, assistant county prosecutor.

Hunting said he also was pleased for the victim and her family that they were able to see justice served in the case.

“She has been waiting 12 years for this [day],” Hunting said.

The sexual assault case had gone cold for about a decade 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.

That discovery culminated with Ottawa police detective Rick Geist, who retired in fall 2011 after 30 years with the Ottawa Police Department, taking a trip to Arizona to interview Corey and bring back a sample of his DNA for analysis by KBI scientists.

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, where he has remained the past 16 months on $500,000 bond.

Judge Godderz revoked Corey’s bond after the guilty verdicts were read Monday, citing the serious nature of the crimes and that Corey had no ties to Kansas. Corey will be held without bond in the county jail, pending sentencing.

A jury of six women and six men had convicted Corey on all five counts in June, but Godderz declared a mistrial in July when he learned one of the jurors had used a smartphone to look up information about the case during deliberations.

Hunting said Monday he was pleased to get the conviction on all five counts for the second time.

“I thought the jury was very thoughtful and considered all the evidence,” Hunting said. “[The jurors’] guilty verdicts on all five counts showed they agreed we had proved our case beyond a reasonable doubt that Ralph Corey was guilty.”

Doug Carder is senior writer for The Herald. Email him at dcarder@ottawaherald.com