Serial rapist pleads guilty after 3 cold cases resurface
By Mariya Murrow
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ATLANTA, Georgia (WGCL) — *** Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic detail and language that may be triggering.
A Decatur man, convicted in a string of cold case rapes in DeKalb County, has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to crimes that date back to 2006.
Court records show 39-year-old Dionte Mapp pleaded guilty to three counts of kidnapping, rape, two counts of Aggravated Sodomy and Aggravated Assault against four women.
In June of 2006, a 17-year-old girl says she met a man, who police would later identified as Mapp, near her South DeKalb home and agreed to go on a date with him. The two reportedly drove to a nearby park off Bouldercrest Road where Mapp forced the girl to perform sex acts before raping and strangling her. She managed to escape and contact police.
Years later, in October of 2013, a 23-year-old woman told authorities she was sexually assaulted by a man while walking home along Candler Road near Flat Shoals Road. The woman alleges a stranger approached her and began asking for her number. After she refused, he grabbed her by the neck, threw her on the ground and raped her before fleeing the scene. That attack was also reported to police.
Less than two years following that violent attack, in March of 2015, a third woman, also 23 years old, was walking along Candler Road near Rainbow Drive to catch a bus to work when she claimed a man grabbed her from behind, put her in a headlock and jammed a gun in her back, threatening to shoot her if she screamed. She said she was taken into a wooded area where she was strangled and raped. The woman escaped and was later hospitalized for her strangulation injuries.
On June 3, 2015, a fourth victim came forward telling police she was walking along Candler Road after getting off the bus from work when Mapp approached her from behind and began strangling her. The woman says she was forced into a wooded area where she began to scream and fight her attacker off. The woman ran home to her boyfriend who returned to the area searching for the assailant. Shortly after, authorities found Mapp’s badly beaten. He was hospitalized for his injuries.
Detectives investigating the June 2015 incident say they recognized similarities between the new assault case and the previous unsolved sexual assaults. When the latest evidence was processed, Mapp’s DNA, which had already been in the system for a previous 2007 felony conviction, was a positive match to the three sexual assaults from 2006, 2013 and March 2015.
Following his guilty plea, a judge sentenced Mapp to a term of life in prison under which he will need to serve 35 years in custody and the remainder on probation under sex offender status.
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