Police: Woman held in Palatine apartment 3 days, repeatedly raped
Marquis Bowers' offer to help a woman overcome drug addiction was no altruistic act, according to Palatine police.
They arrested the 37-year-old parolee on three counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault, saying he attacked the woman after barricading her in a bedroom for three days at his Palatine home on the 1400 block of Ports O' Call.
A Cook County judge set Bowers' bond at $500,000 Tuesday after the sexual assault charges as well as aggravated battery and aggravated unlawful restraint charges. Authorities say the attacks took place March 9-12.
Bowers met the 28-year-old woman in late February. Two days later, he invited her to move in with him, saying he would help her kick heroin, Assistant State's Attorney Adam Klugman said during a hearing in Rolling Meadows.
Shortly after, the assaults began, Klugman said. Bowers bound the victim's hands with black tape and phone cords, brandished a box cutter and utility knife, and threatened to kill her, Klugman said.
After Bowers left the apartment in the early afternoon of March 12, the woman escaped to a Rand Road gas station where she called the police. Police confronted Bowers at the Prairie Brook Shopping Center parking lot, and he ran to a nearby apartment complex on the 1100 block of East Randville Drive, where police used a stun gun to subdue and arrest him.
Bowers' bond hearing was delayed while he spent the weekend at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights suffering from high blood pressure and chemical burns to his mouth. According to Palatine police Cmdr. Kurt Schroeder, Bowers claimed he had swallowed "multiple Baggies of cocaine."
In court Tuesday, Klugman read off a list of Bowers' prior offenses dating back to 1992, when he received probation for unlawful restraint.
His record also includes convictions in 2004 and 2006 of aggravated battery involving great bodily harm, leading to 21/2-year and 31/2-year prison sentences; robbery convictions in 1997 (five years) and 1993 (three years); a one-year conditional discharge for aggravated assault and resisting police in 2005; 21/2 years for resisting police in 2004; five years for delivery of a controlled substance in 2003; and probation for aggravated battery in 1996.
Bowers' arrest comes about two weeks before the start of Sexual Assault Awareness month. Palatine's village council approved the designation of April as Sexual Assault Awareness month at its March 2 meeting with the goal of recognizing sexual violence as a major public health problem and working on prevention. Other villages, including Hoffman Estates, are making the same proclamation.
Bowers next appears in court on April 3.
Assaults: Suspect has long criminal history