This week in our Cold Case Convictions series, where we highlight cases in which the testing of rape kits years later helps bring perpetrators to justice, we turn to Cleveland.
In Cleveland, five cold cases involving two perpetrators have been solved as a result of DNA evidence found in previously untested rape kits. Both Darnell Whitfield and William Echols were apprehended late last year after the rape kit results identified each man to multiple rapes, and they were each sentenced in January 2015.
Darnell Whitfield’s case involved three separate rapes from 1997, 1998, and 2001. The second conviction of 47-year-old William Echols involved evidence collected from two rape and kidnappings, ocurring in 1994 and 1999.
Though all but one of these cases are more than 15-years-old, it was not until 2011, when the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office and Ohio Attorney General’s Office started an initiative to collect and test previously untested rape kits across the state, that these kits were addressed. They were finally tested in 2013, almost 20 years later. Echols was recently convicted and sentenced to 41 years in prison, and Whitfield received a sentence of 24 years.
Ohio has made great progress over the past four years in rape kit testing and reform. These are two of the most recent convictions of 64 total generated from testing in Cuyahoga County alone—home to Cleveland. Across the state, more than 6,250 previously untested rape kits submitted by 149 law enforcement agencies have been tested, yielding 2,369 matches to suspects in the national DNA database.
– By Sophia Schrager and Vivian Long, March 3, 2015