Posted on September 5, 2019

After 5 Years, Serial Rapist Finally Caught After Trying to Become a Police Officer

Matt Agorist, Washington Standard, September 4, 2019

For the last five years, a serial rapist has terrorized the state of Georgia. At least eight different cases of rape and sexual battery have been tied to 24-year-old Kenneth Bowen III. But until now, he has avoided getting caught. All that changed however, when the very department who was investigating his case, caught him after he began the process of becoming a cop.

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According to police, Bowen was hired in June of 2018. However, he was fired months later — not for being a serial rapist — but for showing up late to training and lying to supervisors about where he was.

According to police, all the rapes happened within a two-mile radius of Bowen’s house. When the Georgia Bureau of Investigation drafted composite sketches of the rapists from these incidents, the case started to gain some ground. Investigators would later find evidence which linked all the cases to the same person.

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Reimers said detectives reviewed the calls to see if officers had made contact with any of the suspicious people and then got names and birthdays of those people.

Bowen’s name and birthday was among those names related to a call from 2016, Reimers said. When investigators obtained a photo of Bowen, they saw a striking similarity between his visage and the GBI sketch of the suspected rapist, he said.

Kenneth Bowen III

They then revisited the incident reports filed after the attacks to see if any of the details pointed to Bowen. Victims had told police the attacker had tattoos on his right arm and had left in a gray car with tinted windows. Police found that Bowen had a silver Ford Focus with tinted windows, Reimers said.

While trying to determine if Bowen had tattoos, investigators dug into his social media and found a photo of him with a family member who was dressed in a Clayton County police uniform. That detail, in turn, led investigators to the discovery that Bowen had also worked for the police department.

“And through looking at background information provided, we determined that he reportedly had tattoos on his arm,” Reimers said.

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