Former Georgia police recruit, Kenneth Thomas Bowen III, 24, is arrested for raping eight women since 2015 – Detectives matched his DNA to samples found at ALL crime scenes
Kenneth Thomas Bowen III was arrested on Tuesday in Atlanta for a string of rapes across southern Georgia after going four years undetected
The 24-year-old former Georgia police recruit, is accused of raping EIGHT women since 2015 after detectives match his DNA to samples found at ALL crime scenes
Bowen joined the Clayton County police academy in June 2018 but was fired two months later for not showing up to work
He went to work at Walmart, which is where he was taken into custody this week
Police say that since 2015, he has been breaking into women’s houses and raping them at knife-point
Police identified him as the suspect after the most recent incident in March 2019 where the victim and her boyfriend, who walked in and stopped the assault, both gave police a description of the rapist
Cops tracked Bowen down through social media and discovered his link to the police academy,
The suspect bore striking resemblance to the physical description obtained from victims, so cops they staked him out to obtain the DNA sample which proved a match
Bowen is now in custody charged with rape and sexual battery
One time police academy recruit Kenneth Bowen, [L-R], was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday for raping seven women and attacking another in a string of attacks since 2015. He is shown being taken to jail on Wednesday
Former police recruit Kenneth Thomas Bowen III, 24, was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the attacks which all took place in south Atlanta.
Police say the rapist would force his way into victims’ homes, either through an open window or by pouncing on them when they were at the door, and attacked them, some at knife-point.
For years, police struggled to catch the perpetrator but because not all of the crimes were identical, it was a struggle building a coherent suspect profile.
In June 2018, Bowen joined the Clay County police academy but he was fired in September 2018 for not showing up to work.
After the case broke, he was arrested on Tuesday at Walmart, where he had been working since.
In March of this year, six months after being fired from the police academy, he allegedly committed the final assault on a woman whose boyfriend interrupted it by arriving home at the exact moment she was being assaulted.
Bowen allegedly fled the scene but the woman and her boyfriend were able to provide detailed physical descriptions and kind of car the suspect was driving.
Police then started reviewing 911 calls from the neighborhoods where the attacks took place to try to find a report of anyone acting suspiciously.
Kenneth Bowen photo], was fired by the police department before ever graduating from the academy in September last year after failing to show up to work. He has since obtained work at Walmart, where he was arrested last week after police matched his DNA to specimen left behind by the rapist
A sketch artist has been trying for years to help police create a profile of the serial rapist. These three sketches on the left were produced based on witness descriptions
They found a 2016 call during which one of Bowen was reported. Police officers ran a check for his name and birth date in that incident but he was not arrested.
“We reviewed those calls and looked for names in the calls to see if perhaps an officer had in fact contacted him at some point in the past and run his name and birth date,” Reimers said. “That did lead to obtaining his name and birth date from a call from 2016.”
Taking his information from that 2016 call, detectives started reviewing Bowen’s social media profiles.
There, they saw a picture of him with a relative who was dressed in a police uniform.
They then discovered that he too had worked with the police department, albeit briefly, and that he matched the description given by his alleged victims.
The photo police said, immediately stood out for the “striking similarities” it bore to the police sketches drawn by GBI sketch artist Kelly Lawson.
Crucially, Bowen had arm tattoos and drove a grey Ford Focus with tinted windows – something the women had described.
Last week, authorities obtained a warrant for his DNA during a traffic stop, police said.It came after they had set up surveillance at his work in another county. When he left, they followed him back into Clayton County and then executed the stop. The DNA test was a match for specimen left behind at all eight rape scene. The positive match came back on Tuesday.
Bowen is now in custody charged with rape and sexual battery.
He made an initial appearance on Wednesday morning and is now being held in county jail.
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