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U.S. Department of Justice PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For Information, Tuesday, September 11, 2007
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Washington, D.C. - A 19-year-old District of Columbia man, Jonathan Gassaway, was sentenced today to 30 years in prison for three sexual assaults and a home invasion he committed during the summer of 2006, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor announced.
Gassaway, of the 1800 block of S Street, SE, Washington, D.C., received his sentence this morning in D.C. Superior Court before the Honorable Neal Kravtiz after pleading guilty in March 2007 to one count of first degree sexual abuse, two counts of attempted first degree sexual abuse and one count of first degree burglary.
“This defendant represents every woman’s nightmare,” stated U.S. Attorney Taylor. “Between June 2006 and September, 2006, the defendant broke into four homes where whole families were sleeping, climbing in through unsecured windows, where he would then sexually assault innocent women. Today’s sentence appropriately removes a dangerous sexual predator from our community for a long time.”
According to the government’s evidence, Gassaway terrorized an entire neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C. over a summer. Once in the house, the defendant, who committed the first three sexual assaults while 17 years old, would find the bedroom of his unsuspecting victims, all of whom were young women between the ages of 14 and 21. He would close the bedroom door, shove his hand over their mouths, order them to keep quiet, promising to injure them or their family members if they did not abide by his order, and then he would rape them brutally and repeatedly. Two of the rapes occurred while the victim’s baby watched. In two of the rapes, he demanded money. In both cases, the victim did not have enough money to satisfy him, so he continued to rape her.
All of the rape victims lived within a few blocks of each other. What they did not know was that they also lived within a few blocks of the defendant. Wanted fliers went up all over the neighborhood. By the Fall of 2006, Gassaway was apprehended in connection with a burglary in Southwest Washington, D.C. In that case, he was preparing to rape a fourth victim, but she fought back and the defendant ran. Gassaway fit the description of the serial rapist in the fliers, and the police were able to close the case. Materials collected by the Mobile Crime investigators were promptly sent to the Metropolitan Police Department Fingerprint Examiners and Federal Bureau of Investigations. Gassaway was definitively linked to the sexual assaults in two out of three rapes through fingerprint and DNA matches.
In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Taylor praised the work of Metropolitan Police Detectives John Bolden, David Gargac, and Ingrid Harkins, Mobile Crime officers Ridley Durham, Jr., William Hyatt, Jr., James Savage, III, Keith Slaughter, and Leother Strong, Fingerprint Examiner Diane Glover, FBI Analyst Jerrilyn Conway, and Criminal Investigations Unit Officer Michael K. Evans. He also thanked Victim Advocates Maria Shumar and Iris Vega, Paralegal Specialist Cynthia Muhammad, and legal assistant Donice Adams for their hard work. Finally, he commended the work of Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra F. Foster, who investigated and prosecuted the case.