The Elusive Ramsey Street Rapist Will Be Covered On 'The Genetic Detective'

Between 2006 and 2008, a man wreaked havoc on the residents of Fayetteville, N.C. after he violently sexually assaulted multiple women on Ramsey Street. For years, the man who became known as the Ramsey Street Rapist evaded capture, and his victims had to live with the notion that their attacker was still on the streets. 

When genetic genealogist CeCe Moore, who is also the subject of the ABC series The Genetic Detective, was hired to examine the case, she utilized DNA and she created a profile for the attacker. 

Thanks to CeCe and her team, in 2018, his identity was finally revealed. The case will be covered on the June 23 episode of The Genetic Detective, and one of his victims, Kobi Haschen, will speak out about the harrowing attack she experienced. 

Who was the Ramsey Street Rapist? Read on to find out more about the criminal and to learn how he was finally caught.

Ramsey Street is a long, main road in Fayetteville, N.C. that features both business and residential stretches. After six rapes occurred both on Ramsey Street and its surrounding areas between March of 2006 and January of 2008, it soon became known as a sight for terror.

The culprit attacked many of his victims from behind, and they mainly occurred outside of apartment complexes. Several of the attacks occurred within days of one another.  

Authorities were able to obtain DNA from the sites where the sexual assaults occurred, and they soon came to the conclusion that they were all committed by the same man. But, because the culprit's DNA was not already in the system, investigators were unable to determine who he was. 

Interestingly, the attacks appeared to cease in 2008 without an arrest being made.

Aside from the DNA that led nowhere at the time, the victims had disparate memories about what the assailant looked like. While many agreed that he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt during the assaults, they could not come to a conclusion about his height or his build. 

All of these factors contributed to the cases remaining unsolved for more than a decade. 

In 2016, investigators sent a sample of the suspect's DNA to Parabon NanoLabs. CeCe Moore, who is the head of the lab, began constructing an image of what the rapist might have looked like when he committed the sexual assaults. This image was then publicized and the authorities asked people to send in tips.

When this didn't work, officers hired Parabon NanoLabs to construct a genetic profile of the rapist. They used ancestry websites and relatives of the rapist to create a family tree.

In 2018, a 43-year-old man named Darold Wayne Bowden was arrested in connection to the rapes. Bowden had been arrested in the past for a string of petty crimes. 

He was held in the Cumberland County Detention Center after his arrest in August of 2018 on an $18.8 million bond. Bowden's request for a bail reduction was denied. 

He was charged with three counts of first-degree rape, four counts of second degree rape, 13 counts of second-degree forcible sex offense, six counts of first-degree kidnapping, five counts of first-degree burglary, and multiple counts of larceny and possession of stolen goods, among other charges. 

The Genetic Detective airs on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.