DNA testing prompts charges in teen’s 1991 rape in Swope Park

A routine traffic stop last year in Overland Park led to charges being filed this week in a long-unsolved gang rape of a teenage girl in Kansas City.

A DNA sample taken after the 2013 arrest linked 42-year-old Maurice Parnell Webber, an information technology specialist with little criminal history, to the 1991 sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl in Swope Park, officials said Wednesday.

Jackson County prosecutors charged Webber this week with three counts of forcible rape, three counts of forcible sodomy and one count of attempted forcible sodomy. He would have been 19 at the time of the crime.

According to his profile on LinkedIn, Webber owns two businesses, including one that develops and markets websites. He served four years in the U.S. Marines and worked 14 years in information technology for a property management company, his profile says.

An official with the company was quoted on Webber’s LinkedIn site as saying he is an “extremely talented, creative, and dedicated person” who is “highly esteemed” by his peers.

That company official did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday.

According to court documents in the Jackson County case, investigators collected evidence after the 1991 rape and stored it at the Kansas City Crime Lab.

In 2004, analysts developed DNA profiles of three men from genetic material recovered from the victim’s body and clothing, court documents say. The girl had reported being assaulted by three men.

The test results were entered in a nationwide computer database. No matches were found until a DNA sample obtained from Webber after his Overland Park arrest registered as a match, according to the court documents.

According to records in Johnson County, Webber was driving Aug. 13, 2013, in the area of Interstate 435 and Roe Avenue when an Overland Park police officer noticed a problem with a temporary license tag on his vehicle.

After stopping Webber, the officers determined that the tag was phony and that Webber was driving despite having a suspended license.

Officers arrested him, searched his car and discovered marijuana, which Webber admitted that he was selling, according to court documents.

In November, Johnson County prosecutors filed felony drug charges.

Under Kansas law, when people arrested on felony charges are booked into jail, a DNA sample and fingerprints are collected. Lab analysts develop a DNA profile and enter it into the national database.

The Kansas City lab notified Kansas City cold case sex crimes detectives about the DNA match in February. Only one in 63 quadrillion unrelated people would have that DNA sequence, according to the court documents.

Overland Park police arrested Webber at his home Tuesday morning. He was booked into the Johnson County jail on the Jackson County arrest warrant.

The rape victim reported her assault on Sept. 2, 1991. She told police that she had been drinking and was driving home from a concert when she pulled over in a parking lot near 94th Street and Newton Avenue to sleep.

When she awoke, she was in the the back seat of another vehicle. Four men she didn’t know were in the vehicle, including one who was holding a cloth over her face, according to court documents.

They stole three gold rings from her fingers and took $5 from her pocket before driving to Swope Park, where three of them walked her to a picnic table. After forcing her to disrobe, the three men raped and sodomized her, according to the court documents.

One attacker told her that they would kill her if she told anyone, according to the documents.

After the men fled, the girl “wandered around” in the park for a while, afraid they would return. Eventually she made her way to the Swope Park golf course, where she called for help.

When police found her car at 94th and Newton, where she had been abducted, the passenger door was open and the driver’s side door was ajar.

In the Johnson County case, Webber pleaded guilty July 30 to possession with intent to distribute marijuana and driving with a suspended license. He has not been sentenced.

His attorney in that case said Wednesday she could not comment.

A search of online court records found only minor traffic cases against Webber before his 2013 arrest in Johnson County.

This story was originally published August 13, 2014 at 1:48 PM with the headline "DNA testing prompts charges in teen’s 1991 rape in Swope Park."