Accused serial rapist was a recruit for Ga. police department that caught him, cops say
Police in Jonesboro, Georgia, say a former recruit from their own department is a serial rapist. Officers arrested Kenneth Bowen Tuesday.
Police used DNA to link a series of eight rapes since the summer of 2015, all within a 2-mile radius, according to Clayton County Police Chief Kevin Roberts.
Roberts said the assaults were “a cloud over our community.”
Bowen, 24, was charged in seven rapes and one sexual battery after his arrest.
The police chief said Bowen was never a police officer. Robert said he hired the suspect for the Clayton County Police Department academy in June 2018 and fired him about three months later.
Roberts said Bowen was investigated for being absent without leave from the police training program and lied to investigators when they looked into his absence.
If he hadn’t tried to join the department, the chief said in a press conference Wednesday, “It’s questionable as to when we would have apprehended him.”
U.S. Marshals arrested Bowen at his work at a Walmart Auto Service Center in another county Tuesday, according to WGCL and investigators.
Clayton County’s Acting District Attorney, John Fowler, said that his office will handle the prosecution of the case.
The most recent rape was at about midnight on July 28, WAGA reports. A 28-year-old woman “told police the man broke into her bedroom window and she woke up with him smothering her. She was able to fight back and eventually get her sister, who also lived in the apartment, to help fight off the man.”
The there was another attack in March, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Police told the newspaper that a man forced his way into a woman’s home, and her boyfriend interrupted the assault.
This story was originally published August 28, 2019 at 1:41 PM with the headline "Accused serial rapist was a recruit for Ga. police department that caught him, cops say."
