Green, Robert(2).jpg

Robert Green

(Cuyahoga County Sheriff's department)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A judge sentenced a 69-year-old man to serve what will amount to the rest of his life in prison for the rapes of seven women over nearly a decade.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Pamela Barker sentenced Robert Green to up to 135 years in prison Wednesday.

The previously unsolved rape cases were reopened after Cleveland police began sending about 4,000 untested rape kits to a state lab for testing.

The Plain Dealer covered Green's case and others as part of a series on rape kit cases that ran last August. The series found that many unsolved rapes being investigated by the county DNA Cold Case Task Force involved serial rapists, like Green.

"For the seven women who were brutalized and violated by this violent, serial rapist, justice has finally been served," Assistant County Prosecutor Denise Salerno said in a release.

DNA found in the rape kits initially linked five of the rape cases together but detectives didn't have an identity for the suspect, who lured woman into cars and brutalized them in empty lots and behind abandoned buildings.

Cleveland Sex Crimes Detective Karl Lessmann scoured the different reports and case files for information that might help identify the serial rapist. One victim had given an address where she thought she had seen her attacker.

Lessmann searched for men who had lived at the address and finally found a state identification photo of a man that fit the general description of the rapist. He used that photo to show to victims who had reported their rapes decades ago.

Green was indicted in five of the cases in November, then additional cases in May.

He pleaded guilty to charges in the rape cases shortly after that.