Aurora man guilty of rape, kidnapping

Cedric Flax bet his freedom that a DuPage County jury would find his testimony more believable than the 26-year-old mother of two he was accused of kidnapping and raping - along with a cadre of police and medical officials siding with his accuser.

The 19-year-old Aurora man lost that gamble Wednesday after the jury took a little more than two hours to find him guilty of every charge levied against him. He faces a prison term of between 30 and 120 years.

Jury foreman Mike Lane of Glen Ellyn said most of the jurors found Flax's testimony "unbelievable."

"We had one of the counts where it took us a little longer to come together on, but our decision was based on the totality of the evidence presented by the prosecution," Lane said.

During closing arguments earlier in the day, both sides took turns attacking the credibility of each others' witnesses. Senior Assistant Public Defender Mike Mara attacked inconsistencies in the victim's recollections to police, friends and medical workers.

"What she told you doesn't make sense," he said to the jury.

But prosecutors Ann Celine O'Hallaren and Anne Therieau savaged Flax's testimony. O'Hallaren called him "a liar and a thief" who told his victim she was chosen simply because she was "in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Flax testified that the sex was consensual and he and the victim had been in a relationship for weeks leading up to his arrest.

"All you have is the defendant's word," O'Hallaren said. "The word of someone who chooses to lie if it suits his fancy. We're supposed to believe this is truth."

Mara tried to paint the rape accusation as the victim's excuse for missing work that night. He told jurors the victim's six hours of testimony lacked the emotion of someone who had been traumatized.

"The last time I checked, there wasn't a handbook on how a rape and kidnap victim is supposed to react during trial," Therieau said. "There are no rules."

Prosecutors once again played a video from an Aurora gas station showing a man skulking around the victim's car that she left running and unattended on a cold December night. The video shows the man entering the back seat of the vehicle before the woman returns to the car.

The victim testified that when she returned to the car, Flax ambushed her from behind and told her to drive while he held what later turned out to be a toy gun to her head. Eventually, Flax took over driving duties and took the woman to a house on Aurora's east that had recently been abandoned by relatives.

Once inside the house, the woman testified, Flax sodomized her, beat her and strangled her when she tried to escape. After about six hours and a fortuitous trip to his mother's house on the west side of the city, Flax let the woman go.

She told police she didn't know her attacker, but when they drove her around the area where she was abducted she spotted a white cooler on the steps of house nearby. She told detectives she saw that cooler when she was being led inside the house by Flax earlier in the day. The house was being rented to Flax's mother and detectives soon learned Flax had a key to the house where the rape took place.

"This has all the trappings of an urban legend or of a Hollywood horror movie," O'Hallaren said. "It was six hours of torment and torture; of sexual humiliation and pain. But it's really a tale of survival because he picked a woman who was smart, courageous and strong. It sounds cliché to say, but justice was done and he'll be off the street where he won't be able to hurt anyone."

Flax is expected back in court Dec. 10 for sentencing.