Texas Rangers identify suspect in 1997 Midland sexual assault case
A 49-year-old woman was attacked while taking out trash at Midland Park Mall in 1997. Nearly 29 years later, Texas Rangers named James Lee Woodard and arrested him in Big Spring.
Nearly 29 years after a 49-year-old woman was grabbed in the Midland Park Mall parking lot, Texas Rangers identified James Lee Woodard as the suspect and moved the case back into court with a fresh indictment. The arrest, made on April 2, 2026, turned a long-running cold case into a live prosecution again.
The assault happened on September 1, 1997, when the woman was taking out trash. Investigators said an unidentified man threatened her with a box cutter, forced her into a light-colored van, and another suspect drove while the assault took place. She was later let out of the vehicle. Midland investigators interviewed witnesses, followed community tips and sent DNA from the evidence into CODIS, but no arrest followed for years.
The case did not disappear from the legal system. In 2001, the Midland District Attorney’s Office presented it to a grand jury, which issued an indictment tied to the DNA profile and effectively removed the statute-of-limitations obstacle. That kept the case alive even without a named suspect, a detail that mattered when investigators finally got a better path forward decades later.
That push came in March 2023, when the Texas Rangers and the Midland Police Department flagged the file for the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, or SAKI. Evidence was resubmitted for advanced DNA testing and genealogy work through Bode Technology. The work produced a lead last year, and Texas Rangers used it to identify Woodard, whose name was then attached to the case.
On April 1, 2026, the Midland District Attorney’s Office presented the investigation to the 142nd District Court Grand Jury, which re-indicted the case for aggravated sexual assault with James Lee Woodard named in the charging document. The next day, Midland Police Department officers, with help from the Texas Rangers, Texas Rangers Special Operations Group-4 and the Big Spring Police Department, located and arrested Woodard, a 61-year-old man from Big Spring.
The case shows what SAKI was built to do. The Bureau of Justice Assistance says the program was created to address unsubmitted sexual assault kits in law-enforcement custody and help provide resolution for victims when possible. First announced in 2015 with a $41 million grant initiative, the program has repeatedly helped agencies move old evidence off the shelf, back into the lab and, when the DNA work hits, into genealogy analysis that can finally put a name on a suspect. In Midland, that chain finally reached back to 1997 and brought the case out of storage.
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