DNA testing identified a suspect this week in the 2009 rape of a Marietta College student in her dorm room.
Brandon M. Marino, 23, of Cincinnati, was served with arrest warrants Wednesday at the Hamilton County Jail, where he is incarcerated on a $25,000 bond set for charges of burglary and aggravated burglary. He has been at the jail since Feb. 26 and was indicted on the charges, which are not related to the Marietta incident, on March 5.
Marino is charged in Marietta with felony counts of rape and burglary. Bond for those offenses has been set at $285,000 in Marietta Municipal Court.
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Marino
Marino was a student at Marietta College from the fall of 2006 to the spring of 2008, but not at the time of the rape, said Tom Perry, director of college relations.
Marietta Campus Police Chief David Valkinburg said the investigation into the rape was never closed.
"We never quit working," Valkinburg said. "I think a lot of people thought that nothing was being done."
Municipal court documents indicate a controlled substance may have been used in the attack, but an affidavit of facts filed with the court makes no mention of it.
According to the affidavit, the woman told investigators she awoke in the early morning hours of Feb. 28, 2009, and found an unknown suspect in bed with her. She began yelling and the suspect quickly exited her Parsons Hall dorm room on foot.
The woman told police her room door was unlocked but she had not given the man permission to enter.
Valkinburg said Marino, who was still living in Marietta at the time, was identified as a suspect not long after the attack. According to the affidavit, he denied any involvement in the rape and agreed to provide a DNA sample.
Valkinburg said Marino wasn't the only individual to provide DNA.
"We identified several people early on as potential suspects," he said.
It was on Monday that an agent of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation finally received a forensic evidence report that DNA recovered from the victim's clothing was consistent with Marino's DNA.
Valkinburg said a backlog at the state crime lab contributed to the delay in resolving the case, which was investigated by campus police, along with city police and Ohio BCI&I.
"What this case really boiled down to was the special agent from BCI doing a great job and the detective from the Marietta Police Department helping us process the crime scene," Valkinburg said.
The arrest papers were served Wednesday at the jail by a Marietta police detective and a campus police officer. At the time, Marino declined to answer any questions in regard to the rape, according to court documents.
In a statement issued by Perry, the college thanked the investigating agencies for their "ongoing energy and collaboration...."
"It is our most sincere hope that their efforts may ultimately provide closure for the survivor, the survivor's family and our campus community," the statement says.
The rape was not the only incident at the college in 2009 involving a suspect entering a female student's dorm room.
On May 8, a woman fought off an unknown attacker who entered her unlocked Parsons Hall dorm room around 6 a.m.
On Dec. 11, another Parsons Hall resident reported she startled a man trying to climb through a window into her room around 4:30 a.m.
All three incidents are "totally unrelated," Valkinburg said. No arrests have been made in the latter two crimes.
The February and May incidents prompted new security measures at Parsons and other dorms over the summer. Suite doors at Parsons automatically lock now, and all building card readers were checked to make sure they were working.
