Lloyd Wendell Ailes
A man has been sentenced to 17 years in prison after he admitted raping and robbing a young woman more than a decade ago. Lloyd Wendell Ailes, 59, evaded responsibility for years, but authorities say they were able to track him down thanks to new advances in DNA technology.
He will serve consecutive punishments for two counts of rape as well as the specification of having a gun on his person, online records show. Ailes must also serve 10-year prison sentences for two counts of aggravated burglary and two counts of aggravated robbery — but those terms of confinement will run concurrent to the rape charges. The judge in Butler County, Ohio, credited Ailes for 204 days of time served.
Ailes, who was an Indiana resident, has been at the local jail since his arrest on Dec. 9, online records show.
He must also serve five years of post-release control.
Authorities say Ailes attacked a 21-year-old student of Ohio’s Miami University on Jan. 9, 2006. At gunpoint, he robbed her, tied her up, and raped her in an off-campus home on North Campus Avenue, according to a WLWT-TV report.
“Someone just got in our house,” the woman’s housemate reportedly said in an 911 call. “My housemate just got raped. Please come. He has a gun and told her he’d kill her.”
Ailes reportedly worked locally as a construction worker the year of the attack.
It would take until 2021 for investigators to solve the case, but they credit two pieces of evidence: (1) Ailes, who was masked, briefly showed the woman his face, giving her something to provide to a sketch artist; and (2) he left DNA behind at the scene.
The DNA narrative from the authorities about DNA is quite winding. Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser said officials managed to track down the suspect’s father through that evidence. There was a problem, however: the father said he did not know he had a son.
“That’s what made it so complicated because we were able to find the father, but then almost reached a dead end in determining who the mother was,” Gmoser said, according to WLWT.
Detectives were nonetheless able to find her. Again, the development was quite fraught.
“The mother of this defendant was not aware that the father was somebody other than her husband,” Gmoser continued.
The defense argued that the DNA was tainted because the search warrant had two different names on it regarding who technically initiated the search. The judge denied a motion which memorialized that complaint in April. Ailes pleaded guilty the next month.
[Booking photo via Butler County Jail]