Nearly three decades after a Woodlawn woman was raped at knifepoint in her home, Baltimore County police said Monday that they?ve charged a man in the case who is already in prison for rape.
This is the latest in a string of cold-case rapes the county has cleared using forensic evidence.
Edward Leon Medley, 48, is charged with the 1980 rape of a then 44-year-old woman. Medley broke into the victim?s home on the unit block of Kittridge Court Oct. 11 at 4:14 a.m., police said. Medley sat on her bed, waking her, then raped her while holding a knife to her neck.
Medley is currently at the Roxbury Correctional Institute in Hagerstown for a rape he committed in Baltimore County in 2002, police said.
“It was mandated for him to give a DNA sample once he was incarcerated,” said Cpl. Michael Hill, a police spokesman.
In June, forensics experts connected that sample to the 1980 rape. Medley is charged with two counts of first-degree rape, attempted first-degree rape and first-degree assault. A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for Aug. 15.
The arrest is one of at least 46 cold investigations cleared in Baltimore County since 2005 using DNA evidence archived at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center.
