A 39-year-old Decatur man who was 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 that Dionte Mapp pleaded guilty to three counts of kidnapping, rape, two counts of Aggravated Sodomy, and Aggravated Assualt against four women.
A 17-year-old girl told police in June 2006 that a man, later identified as Mapp, met her near her South Dekalb home and she agreed to go on a date with him. The two reportedly drove to a nearby park off Bouldercrest Road where Mapp then forced the girl to perform sexual acts, and then raped and strangled her. The 17-year-old managed to escape and contacted the police.
In October 2013, a 23-year-old woman told authorities that she was sexually assaulted by a man while walking home along Candler Road near Flat Shoals Road. She alleges that a stranger approached her and started to ask her for her number. When she refused, he grabbed her by the neck, threw her on the ground, and raped her before fleeing the scene. This attack was also reported to the police.
Almost two years later following the previous attack, a third woman who was also 23 years old was walking along Candler Road near Rainbow Drive in March 2013. The 23-year-old woman was catching a bus that morning to get to work when she alleged that a man grabbed her from behind, put her in a headlock, jammed a gun in her back, and threatened to shoot her if she screamed. She told authorities that she was taken into a wooded area where she was strangled and raped. The woman managed to escape and was later hospitalized for her strangulation injuries.
On Jun. 3, 2015, a fourth victim came forward to tell police that she was also walking along Candler Road after getting off the bus from work when Mapp approached her from behind and started to strangle her. The woman said that she was forced into a wooded area where she began to scream and fight Mapp off of her. She said she then ran home to her boyfriend who returned to the area to search for the attacker. Shortly after, authorities found Mapp badly beaten, and he was hospitalized for his injuries.
The detectives who are investigating the June 2015 incident state 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.
she
