Walton said she began blacking out in the car and can’t remember going up to the man’s room. She has a clear memory that one of his co-workers walked in after they arrived, and that the suspect yelled at him to get out. At that point, she told police, she begged him to let her leave. Instead, she said, he raped her for more than an hour.

When the man finished, he threw Walton’s clothes at her. She rushed from the room, dialing 911 and taking note of his room number. She ran down 11 flights of stairs and hid in an alley until her boyfriend arrived. They called police and went to the hospital.

When a police officer arrived, Walton said, one of his first questions was: Why were you at the bar drinking alone?

“I felt blamed,” she said. “I felt like he didn’t believe me.”

The police report shows that the officer went back to the hotel, confirmed the suspect’s room number and got his full name. But the report gives no indication that the officer went to the man’s room or tried to interview him. No one from the police got the name of the suspect’s co-worker or talked to him.

Read Walton’s police report Veteran sex crime investigators analyze how police handled her case

Nearly a week went by before a police investigator called Walton to arrange a formal interview. Another month passed before the investigator reached the suspect by phone, according to the police report. He denied that the two had sex and said he let Walton leave his room when she asked.

The case file shows that Walton’s sexual assault exam found semen. When Minneapolis police asked the suspect for a DNA sample, he said he needed to talk with his attorney. After an exchange of several voice mails, the attorney said he would call the investigator back. He never did.

Soon after that, police stopped investigating.

Reviewing the case at the Star Tribune’s request, Strand, the Arizona consultant, and his wife and business partner, Myra Strand, listed a series of missed opportunities: interviewing the co-worker, examining the hotel room and checking the suspect’s criminal background.

“The report seems incomplete. There are significant outstanding leads,” they wrote.

Minneapolis police declined to comment.

Nearly two years later, Walton returned to that hotel room with a Star Tribune photographer.

She stepped to the window and recalled gazing out at the same buildings on the night she was raped. She remembered how woozy she had felt and flashed back to the assault itself, “before it got bad.”

Since that night, Walton has tried to wipe those memories from her mind. She finished her EMT training, got a night-shift ambulance job with Allina Health, and began her studies for a higher certification. She also saw a series of therapists.

But she thinks about the rape every day. She has nightmares and wakes up screaming. After four years with her boyfriend — the man she hoped to marry — the couple broke up, shattered.

She is angry that the man who raped her was never held accountable.

Why didn’t police go into his room? What if an officer had spoken with him that night? What if they had obtained a DNA sample?

“All of the little things that they could have done better,” Walton said, “or could have done at all.”

Staff writer Faiza Mahamud contributed to this report.