The Serial Rapist in the Woods and Family Justice

Fear can grip a community, any community. About 25 years ago, fear gripped the quiet of Geauga County Ohio, an enclave Forbes magazine once rated as the fourth best place in America to raise a family. The way to describe Geauga 25 years ago is that of a beautiful rural and peaceful county in Northeastern Ohio. It’s about 25 miles from the major hub of Cleveland and was then and to this day remains, a relatively crime free area. Its populace is known for self-reliance and hard work. About 25 years ago, a serial rapist lurked in the shadows of the County.

He would do his dastardly deeds in the evening, under the comfortable cover of darkness. He’d break into homes and rape the female or females there. He’d then tied them up and slither back into the night. Soon afterwards he’d do it again, somewhere else. There was no set time, no rhyme or reason—at least not known to me. I was a young rookie cop at the time in a county bordering Geauga. When you’re a rookie, quite often you are out of the loop about the possible motives and investigative techniques surrounding cases other than what you must be aware of for your scope of responsibility. Anyway, I knew very little about what was really going on.

Nevertheless, I did find out about a hair-raising event that occurred during the investigative stages. Late one night, a vigilant resident called the police when she noticed a man trying to break into her home. Tiny, a mountain of a cop was one of the officers who responded to the call. The responding officers spread out and searched the area. Tiny searched one specific section. At one point, he stopped near a hill for about 10 minutes and remained silent waiting to hear for any signs of movement. Nothing—no sound, just silence. However, when the sun came up cops could plainly see pressed down grass in the form of a person about 10 feet behind where Tiny had been standing. The man they were looking for had been laying in the grass 10 feet behind Tiny!

Fear continued to grip Geauga. The rapist was out there, and everyone knew he was going to strike again, but where, and when? One warm summer night was the when. He struck in the western side of the county that borders busy Cuyahoga County and is a little less rural but still dark and secluded in most spots. He broke into a single-family home and raped a mother who happened to be all alone in the house. She pleaded for him to leave her alone warning him that her husband and son would be home any second.

The man didn’t take heed of her desperate warnings and went ahead and raped her. He had just finished tying her up when the husband and grown son arrived, pulling up the driveway. They heard screaming and rushed into the house to find the woman alive, disheveled, and tied up. They simultaneously saw a man running out of the house who they bolted after chasing him down the driveway. They caught up to him at the very end of the driveway at the edge of the street. A fight ensued between the rapist, son and dad.

The pitch dark of the area hid the battle from anyone’s sight but soon after it started, it ended. The father and son team bludgeoned him to death with a rock they found near the edge of the driveway. In a matter of seconds, the fear in Geauga County ended.

When police arrived the father and son told them that the man would not stop fighting and kept trying to get away as they tried to contain and hold him for the police. They said they had no choice but to smash his skull in. The police did an investigation and found the killing to be justifiable. I’m okay with that. If you rape and devastate lives, expect the possibility of the same level of wrath coming down on you. Sometimes justice is swift and final.