CLEVELAND -- Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty has announced that a superseding indictment has been issued for Hernandez L. Warren.
Warren now faces a possible death sentence for the 1984 kidnapping, rape and murder of 14-year-old Gloria Pointer.
The new indictment from a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury charges Warren, 58, of Cleveland, with two counts of aggravated murder, one count of rape and three counts of kidnapping.
The aggravated murder counts now include felony murder specifications that make it possible for the death penalty to be imposed.
Gloria Pointer disappeared while walking to school on December 6, 1984. The child left her home on East 114th Street in Cleveland around 7 a.m. She planned to meet a classmate and continue on to Harry E. Davis School, where Gloria was to get an award for perfect attendance.
She never reached her friend's home. Her body was discovered around 10:30 that morning at the base of a fire escape behind an apartment building on Orville Avenue.
DNA evidence taken from the crime scene was matched this spring to Warren, who had served 15 years in prison for a 1985 felonious assault and rape. He has been in jail since he was arrested on May 13 by a task force that included representatives of the Cleveland Police Department, the FBI, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office and the Cold Case Unit of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office.
Warren was first indicted on May 22 and entered a plea of not guilty on May 28. But after the case was examined by this office's Capital Review Committee, McGinty elected to seek a new indictment with capital punishment specifications.
"This man dragged a little girl on her way to school off the street and into a back alley. Then he raped her, threw her down a fire escape and executed her by beating her to death with a steel bar,'' McGinty said. "This unsolved case haunted our community for three decades and begs for justice."
