Wrestling duals state finals

Charles Steele, 61, charged with raping four women in 1993 and 1994, is found guilty of multiple counts after jury deliberation on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2014, in Judge Steven Gall's courtroom at the Justice Center. Steele represented himself during the trial. (Lonnie Timmons III/The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- After a four-day trial, a jury Wednesday found Charles Steele guilty of raping four Cleveland women whose rape kits were recently tested after sitting on evidence room shelves for decades.

As the trial wound down, a 46-year-old victim in the case told the jury she always knew the day was coming -- even if the knock on her door took 20 years.

Why, a prosecutor asked her.

"Because everything under the sun comes to the light," she told the jury. "You can't do wrong, and it doesn't come back to follow you. I never lost my faith."

Steele, 61, was the first in the state indicted based on evidence taken from rape kits collected decades ago. He was charged with kidnapping and raping four women on Cleveland's East Side in 1993 and 1994. In some of those cases he used a gun.

Since Steele was charged last March, more than 75 other men have been indicted in rapes related to DNA evidence found in the rape kits.

Steele, who represented himself in court, told jurors in a rambling 35-minute statement Tuesday that the picture prosecutors painted didn't make sense. He said no victims picked him out of a lineup or in court and that physical descriptions they gave didn't match him.

DNA evidence tying him to the four separate rapes, he said, was just numbers on a piece of paper.

The victims, Steele acknowledged, were raped. "I'm just saying I didn't do it."

Assistant County Prosecutor Max Martin reminded the jury that they heard from more than 20 witnesses who recounted how the evidence was collected and what victims reported decades ago.

Investigators also talked about how they re-investigated each of the cases after the DNA evidence became available. That investigation included tracking Steele's movements, which took him to Cincinnati and back during the year in which the rapes were reported.

The jury heard from three of the four victims in the case. One died after she reported her rape but her medical records were introduced at trial.

Martin pointed out to the jury the eerie similarities in the way each woman described a strange attacker approaching them as they walked alone in the dark.

"Each got a bad feeling," he said. And each woman fought back in some way.

"Though justice has been delayed for these women for 20 years ... it will not be denied them," Martin said.

Steele is already serving a lengthy sentence for raping two Cincinnati-area women in 1994. He has filed numerous appeals based on legal issues in those cases and numerous motions and appeals already in the current case, challenging one of the indictments and asserting his right to use a law library to research his defense.

He faces a potential prison sentence of more than 100 years.

Steele asked Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Steven Gall, who presided over the trial, to sentence him immediately but Gall said under state law the victims had the right be in court during sentencing.