CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cuyahoga County prosecutors and investigators are revisiting decades-old unsolved rape cases, using DNA evidence to connect serial rapes, tracking down victims and sending cases to grand juries for indictment – often racing against a 20-year statute of limitations.

The Plain Dealer has been reporting on each case as suspects are criminally charged. Now you can read about all the cases and get updates in one place.

Over the past several years, Plain Dealer reporters have raised questions about the thousands of untested rape kits in police evidence rooms across the state and the country.

Cleveland police began counting their untested rape kits in 2009 and later began sending them in batches for testing.

In 2011, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine stepped up testing efforts by asking all departments to send kits to state labs.

Now, after forensic testing, the kits are yielding results, linking cases to others and to DNA profiles in databases.

In some cases, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty has opted to charge “John Does” based on the DNA profiles of unidentified suspects.

In other cases, prosecutors say they have identified serial rapists who went undetected as they attacked multiple women decades ago.

Find all the cases here.

The indicted

Investigators and prosecutors in Cuyahoga County have spent the last 10 months aggressively going after decades old cases in which sexual assault evidence had been collected from victims but never fully tested.

Since March, the work of the DNA Cold Case Task Force, comprised of county and state investigators, prosecutors and Cleveland police detectives has resulted in 71 rape-related indictments involving crimes reported by more than 100 women.

Close to a quarter of those indictments involve John Does or unknown male suspects – some of which may raise legal questions down the road.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty's office decided early on to use so-called John Doe indictments as a way to preserve the ability to prosecute the rape cases – which generally have a 20-year statute of limitations. | Read the full story

Series of rapes

Kenneth Parker, 54, was charged with raping two different women several months apart in 1993.

2nd 'John Doe'

Prosecutors charged a DNA profile dubbed "John Doe #2" with raping 2 women, one in 1993 and one in 1994.



Indicted in time

Testing of a decades-old rape kit resulted in charges, days before the statute of limitations would have expired.

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Charles Steele

Indicted: 3/6/2013

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Anthony Moore

Indicted: 3/9/2013

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John Doe #1

Indicted: 4/9/2013

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Michael Bass

Indicted: 4/14/2013

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Daryl Fortson

Indicted: 5/8/2013

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Gary Matthews

Indicted: 5/10/2013

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Bruce Jones

Indicted: 5/14/2013

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Darlell Orr

Indicted: 5/23/2013

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Jonathon Snyder

Indicted: 5/23/2013

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David Bowman

Indicted: 5/23/2013

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Harrison Jackson

Indicted: 5/29/2013

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Thomas Burton

Indicted: 5/29/2013

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Charles Brown

Indicted: 6/4/2013

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Tyrone Dillon

Indicted: 6/04/2013

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Elias Acevedo

Indicted: 6/6/2013

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Perry Austin

Indicted: 6/11/2013

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George Woods

Indicted: 6/11/2013

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Michael Mack

Indicted: 6/27/2013

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Jermaine Thomas

Indicted: 6/27/2013

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Jorge Perez

Indicted: 6/27/2013

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John Houser

Indicted: 7/11/2013

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Joey Johnson

Indicted: 7/12/2013

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Ryan Gerhart

Indicted: 7/17/2013

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Michael Dunn

Indicted: 7/17/2013

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Aubrey Shorter

Indicted: 7/17/2013

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Delbert Buckwald

Indicted: 7/19/2013

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Jesse Johnson

Indicted: 7/29/2013

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Quisi Bryan

Indicted: 7/31/2013

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Stephen D. Cothran

Indicted: 8/2/2013

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Kevin Bell

Indicted: 8/9/2013

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Pedro Munoz

Indicted: 8/20/2013

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Demetrius Jones

Indicted: 8/30/2013

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Robert Dunikowski

Indicted: 9/3/2013

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Ivan Lampkin

Indicted: 9/10/2013

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Victor Hill

Indicted: 9/20/2013

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Roy L. Owens Jr.

Indicted: 9/23/2013

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John Doe #3

Indicted: 10/3/2013

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John Doe #4

Indicted: 10/11/2013

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John Doe #5

Indicted: 10/112013

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John Doe #6

Indicted: 10/11/2013

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"Countdown" Doe

Indicted: 11/8/2013

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John Doe #15

Indicted: 11/14/2013

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Michael Irby

Indicted: 11/21/2013

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Marlon Thomas

Indicted: 11/25/2013

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John Doe #16

Indicted: 11/25/2013

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Unidentified male #1

Indicted: 11/25/2013

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Unidentified male #2

Indicted: 11/25/2013

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Unidentified male #3

Indicted: 11/25/2013

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Unidentified male #4

Indicted: 11/25/2013

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Unidentified male #5

Indicted: 11/25/2013

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Unidentified male #6

Indicted: 11/25/2013

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Kimbo O'Neal

Indicted: 11/26/2013

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Andre Webber

Indicted: 11/26/2013

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Jesse Banks

Indicted: 12/6/2013

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Gary Jones

Indicted: 12/6/2013

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William Echols

Indicted: 12/6/2013

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Robert Carter

Indicted: 12/13/2013

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Demetrius Jefferies

Indicted: 12/13/2013

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Tony Malone

Indicted: 12/26/2013

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John Doe #17

Indicted: 12/26/2013

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Unidentified male #9

Indicted: 12/26/2013

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John Doe #18

Indicted: 12/26/2013

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John Doe #19

Indicted: 1/3/2014

Handling the untested kits

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland is just one of many cities that promised to test thousands of overlooked rape kits and are now scrambling to find strategies to deal with decades-old cases that create more work for law enforcement and open old wounds for victims.

Cleveland has sent off about half of the 3,000 kits they expect to test. Houston has more than twice as many. Detroit is straining to address even more.

Those cities, along with others, are wrestling with some of the same questions: How to pay for new investigations of old cases while not ignoring current rapes? How and when to tell people who were victimized so many years ago that their attacker may have been found? And how to come to terms with the fact that some serial rapists, found through testing, were allowed to remain free? | Read the full story

Nationwide testing

As DNA testing has become more affordable and efficient, police departments across the country are trying to figure out how best to use thousands of boxes of evidence.

Lack of equipment

Since the 1990s, crime labs -- whether city, state, regional or national -- have struggled to test the exponentially growing amount of DNA evidence collected.



6,000 rape kits

Cleveland police have tallied more than 6,000 rape kits and pieces of evidence from sexual assault cases going back 17 years. And they continue to review that evidence case-by-case.

Technical limitations, mountains of evidence

If trends from early testing continue, roughly a third of the kits sent could match a profile in state and national DNA databases, according to a Plain Dealer analysis of Ohio Attorney General's Office data.

Those matches don't automatically mean a rape case is solved but the "hits" or matches give detectives investigative leads, confirm original suspects or identify serial rapists.

Statewide, when all currently submitted kits are tested, police departments could be faced with some 850 potential cases resulting from the DNA matches. Cleveland alone could have about 390, according to the analysis. | Read the full story

Counting kits

Other cities admitted to having huge caches of untested kits -- sometimes in the thousands; Cleveland officials did not know how many untested kits they had in storage.

Rape kits backlogged

Since the 1990s, crime labs -- whether city, state, regional or national -- have struggled to test the exponentially growing amount of DNA evidence collected.



A day too late

The first indictment resulting from the initiative to examine untested sexual assault evidence kits was presented to a grand jury after the statute of limitations expired.