Man Sentenced for Deondre Dawson’s Murder

EVANSTON, IL - Jimmie Dunlap was sentenced Wednesday to spend 46 years in prison following a first degree murder conviction in the 1992 stabbing of Deondra Dawson in an Evanston apartment. 

Judge Jeffrey Warnick sentenced Dunlap, 46, to the prison term during a hearing at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse in Skokie, according to Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. 

Dunlap was charged with Dawson’s murder in 2013 after DNA taken from a vaginal swab a year earlier provided a match. He was convicted earlier this year. 

READ MORE HERE: Deondre Dawson Murder Suspect Convicted

According to prosecutors, Dawson was stabbed and killed in the early morning hours of April 23, 1992, in Dawson’s apartment in the 600 block of Sherman. An autopsy revealed that Dawson had been stabbed at least 34 times. 

The body of Dawson, who was 25 years old at the time of her death, was found by her four-year-old son, who prosecutors said was present while the murder was carried out. Police found her “lying naked in a large pool of blood on the dining room floor of the apartment.”

An Evanston Police Department reopened the Dawson murder case earlier this decade after it had been classified as a cold case.