A Baltimore City man is on trial in a cold-case rape detectives cracked using DNA from the rape of a woman abducted outside a Linthicum nightclub almost 18 years ago.
Wendell Keys, 40, of Gwynn Oak, was arrested in August 2005 after detectives matched his DNA to semen recovered from the 24-year-old victim in August 1990.
He is on trial this week for first-degree rape and kidnapping before Anne Arundel Circuit Judge William Mulford.
The victim, who appeared petrified to testify Tuesday, said she went with a girlfriend to the Safari nightclub on July 31, 1990, but her friend never returned from the restroom.
“I started panicking, because I didn?t want to be alone,” testified the victim, whose name The Examiner is withholding.
“I went to see if maybe she was out front … I was walking out the door yelling her name, and I heard a voice say, ?She?s over there.?”
Then two men grabbed her, pulled her into the parking lot and forced her into a car, the victim said.
“I was screaming, because I was trapped, and I knew something was horribly wrong,” she said.
“I was banging on the window and kicking the doors, praying [for them] to let me go.”
The men drove her to a secluded parking lot and took turns raping her as the other held her down, she said.
The victim said she attempted to run after the rape, but the men grabbed her and threatened to kill her because she saw the car?s license plate.
They later dropped her off near her boyfriend?s house but threatened to kill her young daughter if she went to police, she said.
Prosecutor Pamela Alban said Keys? DNA was an “exact match,” but the second suspect could not be identified.
Defense attorney Warren Brown questioned the victim?s story, saying, “It?s quite strange that your rapist would just drop you off at home.”
Brown suggested that the victim?s friend had left the club with a man, so the victim also left with men and then made up the rape to appease her abusive boyfriend who was angry when she came home late.
Keys? criminal history includes two convictions for second-degree rape in Baltimore County in 1990 and 1998.
The trial is expected to continue today.
