The 1982 murder of a Nampa girl was ‘extremely heinous’. Her killer has been convicted

The man recently convicted of raping and murdering a 9-year-old Nampa girl in 1982 will spend the rest of his life in prison.

David Dalrymple, 66, was sentenced Friday to consecutive life sentences by 3rd District Judge Thomas Whitney, who called Dalrymple’s crimes “extremely heinous,” according to a news release from the Canyon County District Attorney’s Office.

Whitney said Dalrymple, who spent two decades behind bars after committing multiple violent crimes, was “a violent, recidivist, remorseless child sex offender … incapable of rehabilitation.” In imposing a sentence without the possibility of parole, the judge said he could ensure Dalrymple would never again attack a child.

“The road to justice has been a long one,” Canyon County District Attorney Bryan Taylor said in the statement. “After 42 years, the Johnson family can finally have closure: The man who took their precious daughter from them will remain behind bars for the rest of his life.”

After a six-week trial that ended in June, a 12-person jury convicted Dalrymple of first-degree murder and rape in the death of Daralyn Johnson.

Dalrymple was first announced as a suspect in 2020 — and charged in 2022 — after being linked through DNA evidence, and at the time he was incarcerated for the 2004 kidnapping of a woman and her child, whom he sexually abused for several years, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.

Charles Fain was initially charged and then convicted in Daralyn’s death in November 1983. A few months later, he was sentenced to death and remained on death row for nearly two decades. He was nearly executed four days later in 1991, before U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor suspended the death penalty, the Statesman reported.

Fain was exonerated and released from prison in 2001, two years after filing a petition to conduct DNA testing on pubic hair found during the girl’s autopsy. It wasn’t until 2021 that Fain was declared innocent by the state of Idaho.

Daralyn was reported missing on February 24, 1982, after failing to make it to school. Her body was eventually found days later, 20 miles away, in a drainage ditch near the Snake River.

Journalist Alex Brizee contributed to this article.