Suspected serial rapist roamed free for 12 years thanks to rape kit backlog

A suspected serial rapist who evaded arrest for 12 years was convicted last week in the first of four rape cases pending against him, WBRC Fox reports.

Police in Memphis, TN say Jacquet Moore, who was convicted of raping a woman at gunpoint in 2000, was allowed to roam the streets of Memphis for over a decade because that’s how long it took for authorities to test the victim’s rape kit.

“It's justice last week for a victim that was long overdue,”  Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich said.

Moore appeared in court Tuesday in a second trial for an alleged rape that also took place in 2000. He’s charged with two separate rape cases from 2003.

Investigators told WBRC Moore was able to fly under police radar, despite troves of evidence immed iately available in the untested rape kits. The Shelby County D.A.’s office insists they are working to mitigate the problem.

“We have gotten over half of the 12,000 rape kits off of the shelves and into laboratories,” Weirich said, though only 1,500 have been tested.

In 2003, the city neglected to take advantage of a $3.4 million federal grant that could have cleared the backlog, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reports. The grant provided funds to conduct DNA testing on cases without a known suspect, but only $537,000 of that money was spent due in part to a “reluctance among police departments across the state to cooperate.”

For now, the Shelby County D.A. says it hired a former cold case investigator to work through the unsolved rape cases.

Watch the video below, via WRBC Fox:

WBRC FOX6 News - Birmingham, AL