RIDGELAND, SC (Feb. 20, 2025) – A Georgia man who brutally raped a woman and “left her for dead” along Alligator Alley in a Jasper County nature preserve has been convicted and sentenced to prison.
A General Sessions jury needed just 37 minutes of deliberation to find John Steven Reynovel Metzler, 46, guilty Thursday of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping in a March 15, 2023, attack.
The former Hardeeville resident was sentenced to 30 years in prison for each offense, and the sentences are to run concurrently. Metzler must also register as a sex offender.
“This woman was beaten, bruised and strangled,” said Hunter Swanson of the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, who prosecuted the case. “He knew what he was doing when he drove to that area of Jasper County. He knew how desolate it was. He tossed her out, naked. Without a phone. Without clothes.
“And, if not for a Good Samaritan finding her at 3:30 a.m., it’s likely that this young woman wouldn’t be here today.”
The woman, then 33 years old, and Metzler first met at Bootleggers, a sports bar in Pooler, Ga., on the evening on March 14, 2023. The two left the bar and the woman followed Metzler to a nearby hotel parking lot, where she parked her vehicle and got into the front seat of Metzler’s rented U-Haul transit van. The woman said she thought they were going to an after-party at a pool hall in Georgia, but a license plate reader captured the U-Haul van entering South Carolina after 2 a.m., a Hardeeville Police detective testified.
A passerby on his way to work spotted the woman wearing only shoes climbing out of the marsh along Alligator Alley within the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge. He stopped his vehicle and called 911, giving her a pair of pants and a sweatshirt.
In an 911 call, you can hear the woman say: “He raped me and tried to kill me.” She testified that the incident was “like something out of a horror movie.”
She was taken to a nearby hospital and treated by a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE).
That nurse, Jennifer Talley of the 14th Circuit Victims Services Center, corroborated the woman’s claims that she was beaten, punched in the face, noting the woman had “bruising and swelling on her face.” Talley said petechia of the eye, redness in the woman’s throat and behind her ear were indications of strangulation.
The woman was one of 15 witnesses to take the stand during the three-day jury trial at the Jasper County Courthouse. She described how she thought she was going to die. While locked in the back of the van, the woman said she licked the palms of her hands and smeared them on the van’s rear windows. She wanted to leave evidence should her body never be found.
Crime scene investigators and DNA analysts from the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) described how hair was collected from the back of the van. It belonged to the woman. Metzler’s DNA was found inside the woman’s underwear, which was found in a trash can outside the Garden City, Ga., house where he rented a room. Investigators also found the woman’s fleece jacket and her purse with credit cards in the same trash can.
“He disposed of the evidence that would help convict him,” Swanson said.
Circuit Court Judge Robert Bonds handed down the sentence.
Metzler’s criminal history includes firearms charge in Virginia (2003); assault on a family member and abduction by force (2008); obtaining goods by false pretenses (2014); and receiving stolen goods in Georgia (2014).
SLED assisted in the investigation of this case.
Swanson is the leader of the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office Special Victims Unit, which prosecutes cases involving domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse and other crimes against vulnerable populations. She also is a member of the Career Criminal Unit, which prosecutes the circuit’s most violent and habitual offenders. That team has earned convictions against 509 of the 560 defendants it has prosecuted since its formation in 2009.
