SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. – A man was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for the rape and murder of a woman in Seminole County in July 1986.
Danny Lynn Emitt, 54, was arrested in 2019, 33 years after Eveline Aguilar’s murder, when investigators resubmitted DNA evidence collected from the apartment the woman was found stabbed to death in.
He was indicted by a grand jury on first-degree premeditated murder with a weapon and burglary of a dwelling with assault or battery.
The judge sentenced Emitt to life in prison on both counts, with him required to serve 25 years minimum before the possibility of parole on the first-degree murder charge.
“It’s a relief. A relief of guilt. To know that she’s going to get some justice, she has to be smiling,” said Denise Elliott, Eveline Aguilar’s sister said. “I feel relieved, happy. I feel like I’m about to start my life now.”
According to officials, a friend of Aguilar’s found the woman’s body after discovering her apartment door was open.
Officials said Aguilar’s body had been brutally and repeatedly stabbed to death, and the medical examiner ruled her death a homicide.
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During the investigation, deputies found that a pane of glass had been removed from a window, allowing it to be unlocked. Deputies also discovered palm prints on the window sill inside the apartment, as well as seminal fluid.
Investigators were able to match the seminal fluid collected in Aguilar’s case to a sexual assault case investigated by the Melbourne Police Department in 2005, according to an affidavit.
In the 2005 case, Emitt voluntarily gave his DNA for Melbourne police to compare it with evidence collected in the case involving the sexual assault of two underage girls. Though Emitt was cleared in the sexual assault case, his DNA remained in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Combined DNA Index System.
A judge is expected to sentence Emitt to life in prison.
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