KANSAS CITY, Mo. — DNA technology has led authorities to charge a 55-year-old prison inmate with the rape of four women and a child in the mid-and-late 1980s.
Authorities say thanks to the technology, they just discovered that Ozie Banks was the man who committed the rapes on five different occasions:
Nov. 5, 1986
July 14, 1989
Aug. 21, 1989
Sept. 6, 1989
Sept. 26, 1989
According to court records unsealed on Friday, Banks entered the women’s Midtown Kansas City homes, surprising them and forcibly raping them. He threatened their lives with a knife or threatened to kill them or their family members. One of the victims was a 13-year-old girl at the time. After the defendant raped another victim, he left her apartment with her credit card and cash.
DNA collected as evidence at the scene and tested recently, linked Banks to the rapes, according to court records.
Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker was pleased to announce that the five victims of these rapes now know their attacker can be brought to justice. She has charged Banks with five counts of Forcible Rape, three counts of Forcible Sodomy and one count of Robbery 1st Degree.
Banks is currently in custody of the Missouri Department of Corrections. He’s serving 30 years for forcible rape and sodomy on an earlier cold-case DNA hit. That crime was committed in a similar area of Kansas City on March 22, 1986. He is serving 30 years consecutive for forcible rape and 30 years for forcible sodomy. Banks first parole hearing in that case was set for November 2018.
This case was co-investigated by the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Cold Case Unit and the Kansas City Police Department’s Cold Case Unit.
