Long-delayed review of rape kit DNA brings Twin Cities woman before her attacker at sentencing

After living with a dozen years of fear and pain after a stranger beat and raped her in a Minneapolis park, Melissa Zimmerman on Wednesday looked up from delivering her statement to stare daggers at her attacker.

The Twin Cities wife and mother detailed the crushing effects that night have had on her relationships, most notably with her husband, Adam, a man she’s been with since they were teenagers.

“It brought up questions of safety, vulnerability and trust — not just toward the perpetrator, but sometimes even within my own marriage," she said, briefly locking eyes with convicted rapist Mohamud Hillow Bulle before he was sentenced in Hennepin County District Court. “Moments that should have been comforting, loving and secure were clouded by reminders of the trauma and violation.”

Although the Minnesota Star Tribune generally does not identify victims of sexual violence, Zimmerman, 43, consented to the use of her name. The lingering effects of what happened are widespread, she said. Anything that requires physical touch — seeing a doctor or dentist, or even relaxing activities like a massage or a manicure — caused her to withdraw. At the worst times, hugs from even her own children could be too much to bear.

For much of that time, Zimmerman believed the man responsible for her pain was still out there, until her sexual assault exam was discovered among a batch of untested rape kits, leading to a match with Bulle’s DNA. Bulle, 36, was sentenced Wednesday to nearly 20 years in prison for her rape and kidnapping. To Zimmerman, justice only came after years of an “exhausting and frustrating” process after an event from which she’s still trying to recover.

“This experience,” she said, “has forever altered my life.”

Bulle is imprisoned on an attempted murder conviction. He eluded investigators until May when a backlog of untested sexual assault kits was examined for incriminating evidence through the Minneapolis Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, a partnership forged by the County Attorney’s Office, the Minneapolis Police Department, the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Sexual Violence Center, a local nonprofit focused on combating sexual violence and abuse.

“This result took far too long, and I am sorry,” said County Attorney Mary Moriarty, speaking at a post-sentencing news conference with Zimmerman and her husband standing steps behind her. “I can’t imagine having to relive this terrible assault so long after it happened. She courageously came to court and testified in front of the man responsible for harming her.”

The multi-agency rape kit examination initiative has led to the review of more than 1,700 backlogged sexual assault cases in the past five years, resulting in charges whenever “DNA hits have allowed us to move forward,” Moriarty said.

She said that every outstanding sexual assault kit from the 1990s to 2015 has been reviewed as part of this initiative, with the first conviction coming in 2023.

Zimmerman lamented how long it took for her attacker to be held to account. After the rape, Adam Zimmerman attempted for months to follow up on the sexual assault exam results, only to be told they were pending. Melissa Zimmerman assumed it contained no DNA, but she was wrong — it was never tested.

She remembered when “I wanted to give up — a lot. Girls out there, getting a rape test kit done isn’t easy. It’s scary. If I wouldn’t have had it done that day, I wouldn’t have been able to send a horrible, horrible person to jail.”

She pushed back on that assertion on Wednesday, saying she doesn’t recall a phone call about pursuing the case.

The complaint “made it sound like I had declined all of this,” she said. “I haven’t. There was no follow-up with anything. ... If there was indeed a phone call to ask me one question whether I wanted to move forward with this horrible case, and I was caught off-guard and happened to say no, I don’t have that on record.”

Moriarty said solving complex cases like this one involves empathy and follow-up with victims.

“I can’t imagine how traumatic this is,” she said. “So, it does require repeated inquiry and working with the person to give them time ... to think about whether they want to go through the process.”

Adam Zimmerman said that in the wake of the rape he fought hard to be present for his children and his wife, never defining her by what happened to her.

According to criminal charges against Bulle:

On Oct. 13, 2013, Melissa Zimmerman was in Minneapolis at an event with friends. At some point she became separated from the group and was soon approached by Bulle.

He followed Zimmerman and offered her use of his cellphone. She couldn’t complete the call and gave the phone back to him. Bulle then pushed her into a ditch in a park. He pinned her down, beat her and sexually assaulted her before walking away.

A passerby saw her and called 911. She went to HCMC, where she had a sexual assault exam. The evidence was sent to the BCA for forensic testing, its results sitting dormant for years until the rape kit initiative was well underway.

In May 2024, the BCA matched the DNA profile to another unknown profile tied to a criminal sexual conduct case in St. Paul.

Given the opportunity to address the court, Bulle did not apologize. He maintained his innocence and asked that he be deported back to his native Somalia, a request that only federal officials could consider.

Before imposing the maximum sentence allowed by state guidelines, Judge Shereen Askalani noted that Bulle “beat her, strangled her and could have killed her ... at a time when she was particularly vulnerable ... Your lack of remorse and acceptance of responsibility is troubling to this court.”