A judge has sentenced a man found guilty of serial Cobb rapes 32 years ago.
Antonio Ledell Brooks, now 48, was found guilty by a Cobb Superior Court jury on Friday and was given two consecutive life terms plus 20 years by Judge Gregory Poole, according to the Cobb District Attorney’s Office.
Brooks was convicted on two counts each of rape, aggravated assault and false imprisonment and one count of burglary.
According to information released by the DA’s office, the first victim, who was 24 years old at the time, was attacked on Sept. 1, 1986 at a Franklin Road apartment by a man wielding a knife.
A few days later, another woman, aged 23 then and living a block away at another apartment on Franklin Road was raped and severely beaten, according to prosecutors. They said both women were treated at Kennestone Hospital, where their rape kits were collected, but no suspects were identified.
On an unspecified date in 1988, another young woman was raped at an apartment on Powers Ferry Place, off Delk Road and near Powers Ferry Road, the DA’s office said. The woman told police she later saw the same man at her complex and identified him, leading to Brooks’ conviction in that case, the DA’s office said.
It was that conviction that led to the resolution of the Franklin Road rapes, according to prosecutors, a cold case investigation more than 20 years in the making.
In 2008, Georgia Department of Corrections collected Brooks’ DNA and sent it to the GBI for entry in the federal CODIS, or DNA, database.
Five years later, in 2013, the Marietta Police Department asked the GBI Crime Lab to analyze DNA from the 1986 rapes on Franklin Road.
The Cobb DA’s office said the GBI reported an initial match in those kits to Brooks, then took new swabs of Brooks’ DNA and confirmed the matches.
He was put on trial this week, and found guilty after two hours of jury deliberation, the Cobb DA’s office said.
“What happened to these women is every person’s nightmare and despite the passage of over 30 years, justice was served today,” said Cobb assistant district attorney Courtney Veal in a statement. “The defendant has forfeited his right to live in a free society, and the judge’s sentence should ensure that he can never victimize again.”
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