The suspect in a string of increasingly violent home invasion robberies in suburban Maryland is a convicted killer and sex offender, according to officials and court records.
Kevin D. Ray was apprehended in North Carolina over the weekend and has been extradited to Maryland to face charges in home invasions reported last week in Wheaton, Bethesda and Temple Hills.
His rap sheet includes a 1996 guilty plea to manslaughter, a 1999 robbery guilty plea and a 2005 plea to a third-degree sex offense.
The 33-year-old Fort Washington man put “terror and agony” into the communities where the attacks happened, said Prince George’s County Police Chief Mark Magaw. The crimes attributed to Ray, Magaw said, “are evil.”
The spate of home invasions began last Tuesday, when a woman and her infant were robbed at gunpoint in a Wheaton garage. On Wednesday, three people were tied up and one was sexually assaulted in an armed Bethesda attack. And Friday, six people were bound with zip-ties in Temple Hills in another invasion that involved a sexual assault.
“It just continuously got worse,” Magaw said.
Court records show Ray was charged in an August 1995 slaying in Prince George’s County and pleaded guilty to manslaughter the next year. He received a five-year sentence, but was released on parole and in 1999 was sent back to prison after pleading guilty to robbery with a deadly weapon.
Then, in 2005, he was charged in Prince George’s County with a third-degree sex offense, pleaded guilty and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years behind bars.
It couldn’t be determined Monday when Ray was most recently released from prison. Police officials in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties said they did not have details about his prior convictions.
Ray, who is registered as a sex offender, was last seen by community supervision officials in December and had been fulfilling the requirements of his release, Magaw said.
Ray was taken into custody Saturday after driving to a Walmart in Kitty Hawk, N.C. He attempted to flee on foot but was apprehended.
