TIMOTHY J. MCGINTY CUYAHOGA COUNTY PROSECUTOR 100th indictment for DNA Cold Case Task Force targets murderer and serial rapist FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 2, 2014 “Never before have so many dangerous rapists been identified and arrested in such a short time. Untested rape kits have been a gold mine for law enforcement.” -- Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty. Cleveland -- Career criminal and convicted sex offender Larry McGowan has been indicted for five cold case rapes and for the 1997 murder of one of those victims, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty announced. Friday’s indictment of Larry McGowan by the Grand Jury is the 100th brought about through the work of the DNA Cold Case Task Force in the County Prosecutor’s Office since it was organized in March of 2013. The Grand Jury charged McGowan with two counts of Aggravated Murder, one count of Murder, seven counts of Rape, eight counts of Kidnapping, three counts of Aggravated Robbery and two counts of Aggravated Burglary. “McGowan is a one-man crime wave, a cold-blooded killer and a psychopath who destroys human lives,” said Prosecutor McGinty. “One thing our Task Force has learned in this DNA Cold Case effort is that there are many active serial rapists. The question is how many more McGowans are out there.” The DNA Cold Case Task Force, a joint effort of the County Prosecutor’s Office, the Cleveland Police Department, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, pursues leads generated by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative. In the past 13 months, the DNA Cold Case Task Force has launched 835 investigations as BCI forensic scientists continue to work through a backlog of more than 4,000 rape kits from police agencies in Cuyahoga County that had never been submitted for DNA testing. Based on early projections, Prosecutor McGinty anticipates there could be more than 1,000 indictments by the time the Task Force finishes its work. “Dollar for dollar this will be the most productive use of time and money by a law enforcement task force ever in Cuyahoga County,” Prosecutor McGinty said. “We now realize that the DNA in these old rape kits is a ticket to prison for a trainload of violent rapists. These Cold Case kits are a virtual gold mine. We have an unprecedented opportunity to take a large percentage of this county’s most dangerous criminals off the street all at the same time. We have hit the mother lode – and we intend to mine the hell out of it. ”By putting them in prison, these habitual offenders will not be able to rape, burglarize or kill others -- which our data proves they otherwise would. This Task Force will have a surprisingly significant impact on the safety of the community and on public confidence as we remove hundreds of one-man crime waves from the streets.” To date, roughly one-third of DNA Cold Case Task Force indictments have involved serial rapists – that is, offenders tied to more than one victim. Defendants in the first 100 indictments had more than 160 victims. And McGowan is among the very worst offenders. His DNA has been tied to five rapes of Cleveland women in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2010. McGowan, 38, has now been indicted in all of those cases, including two in 1998. In addition, he has been indicted for the aggravated murder of one of those victims: 41-year-old Maxine Pratt, who was raped and killed on February 2, 1997, on East 87th Street in Cleveland. McGowan drove over her head with a car, presumably thinking he had silenced the only witness to his crime. He did not reckon with the investigative value of the DNA he left behind. McGowan has already started serving an 11-year sentence for the November 2012 rape of an Akron woman. Cleveland police continue to investigate McGowan for a 2010 murder. “We do not yet know the total number of crimes he has committed,” Prosecutor McGinty said. “The Task Force is re-examining unsolved cases in the neighborhoods where he operated to see if McGowan may have been responsible. We are challenging ourselves to look at old cases with fresh eyes and take advantage of new evidence about McGowan and his M.O., just as the FBI and CPD did in the Elias Acevedo case.” McGowan managed his crime sprees between seven trips to the penitentiary. Unfortunately, in his prior prison stays, Ohio corrections authorities failed to obtain a DNA sample for the state’s data base of offenders. Had they done so, some his crimes might have been solved sooner and his latest victims would have been spared altogether because he would have been in prison. According to news stories in January of 2013, McGowan was swabbed for DNA after he was arrested in Akron. When his genetic profile went into the state’s DNA data base, it generated matches that tied him to the crimes in Cuyahoga County for which he has now been charged. State officials with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and BCI said McGowan apparently was swabbed in 2002 or 2003, but that the test failed and should have been redone. It apparently was not, even as McGowan was released from prison in 2010, sent back following another offense in 2011 and released again in 2012. “The Akron Police insisted on swabbing this guy after they arrested him and made sure his DNA profile got into the state’s data base,” said Prosecutor McGinty. “This case should be a strong message to all police departments in Cuyahoga County to take a DNA sample whenever they arrest people for felonies. This will help solve murders and rapes and prevent more people from being victimized by these serial criminals. Research has shown that rapists engage in a wide variety of other crimes between rapes.” Ohio law has required authorities to collect DNA from individuals who have been arrested on felony charges since 2011. McGowan’s is the first indictment for the Task Force to be based on an arrestee’s DNA sample. Contact: Joseph Frolik, Director of Communications and Public Policy. Office phone: (216) 443.7488. Cell: (216) 640.6186. http://prosecutor.cuyahogacounty.us.