1982 murder of Nampa girl was ‘heinous in the extreme.’ Her killer has been sentenced

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

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

Whitney said that Dalrymple, who spent two decades behind bars after committing several violent crimes, was “a remorseless, repeat, violent sexual abuser of children ... incapable of rehabilitation.” By imposing a sentence with no possibility of parole, the judge said he could ensure that Dalrymple never attacks a child again.

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

Following a six-week trial that ended in June, a 12-person jury found Dalrymple guilty of first-degree murder and rape in Daralyn Johnson’s death.

Dalrymple was first announced as a suspect in 2020 — and charged in 2022 — after being connected using 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 subsequently 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 came within four days of being executed in 1991 before U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stayed the capital punishment, the Statesman previously reported.

Fain was exonerated and released from prison in 2001, two years after he filed a motion to conduct DNA testing on pubic hairs that were 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 Feb. 24, 1982, after not making it to school. Her body was eventually found days later 18 miles away in a drainage ditch near the Snake River.