Iowa man sentenced for 2003 abduction, assault of teens

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa man has been sentenced to more than 33 years in federal prison for kidnapping and sexual assaulting two Omaha, Neb., teenagers nearly 20 years ago.

Myron Lee Brandon, 43, of Pacific Junction, was sentenced Wednesday to 405 months in prison, federal prosecutors in western Iowa said in a news release.

Brandon was found guilty in October of two counts of kidnapping and two counts of transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

Prosecutors said Brandon met the then-14- and 15-year-old girls in downtown Omaha in 2003. He drove them to a rural road outside Pacific Junction, where he held them at knifepoint, bound them with rope, sexually assaulted them and burned them with a cigarette.

The teens escaped and walked to Interstate 29, where they were picked up by a motorist and taken to safety, officials said.

Brandon wasn’t linked to the crime until years later, when a 2015 initiative to re-examination of old laboratory evidence linked him to DNA collected in rape kits at the time of the crime.