RIDGELAND, SC (Feb. 21, 2025) – A Georgia man who brutally raped a woman and dumped her in a nature preserve has been convicted and sentenced to prison.

John Steven Reynovel Metzler, 46, was found guilty Thursday of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping in a March 15, 2023, attack.

“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. 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 victim and Metzler first met at a sports bar in Pooler, Ga., on the evening of March 14, 2023. They both 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 his rented U-Haul transit van.

According to the woman, she thought they were going to an after-party at a pool hall in Georgia. However a license plate reader captured the U-Haul van entering South Carolina after 2 a.m., a Hardeeville Police detective testified.

The woman was spotted the next day, by a passerby, climbing out of the marsh in the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge with just shoes on. The individual stopped, and called 911. he also gave her a pair of pants and a sweatshirt.

The woman can be heard on the 911 call saying: “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. Talley also testified that petechia of the eye, redness in the woman’s throat and behind her ear were indications of strangulation.

S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) crime scene investigators and DNA analysts described how hair belonging to the woman was collected from the back of the van. Officers also found Metzler’s DNA in the woman’s underwear, which was found in a trash can outside the Garden City, Ga., house where he rented a room. The woman’s fleece jacket and her purse with credit cards were discovered in the same trash can.

“He disposed of the evidence that would help convict him,” Swanson said.

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)
• Receiving stolen goods in Georgia (2014).

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.

Circuit Court Judge Robert Bonds handed down the sentence.