Prosecutor: DNA, fingerprints tie suspect to Elgin rape

At 12:05 a.m. May 24, 2010, an Elgin emergency dispatcher received a call from an elderly woman in the Buena Vista apartment complex who said she’d just been raped and beaten by an intruder.

The operator, Heidi Reinhardt, kept the victim on the line for 6 minutes and 20 seconds trying to get more information until police arrived.

“I couldn’t see. He nearly killed me,” the woman said on the 9-1-1 tape, which was played in a Kane County Courtroom Tuesday afternoon.

“Please hurry,” she said at least three times during the call.

Rodney McGowan, 42, of the 1000 block of North Monticello Avenue, Chicago, is on trial for criminal sexual assault, home invasion and aggravated battery of a senior.

Kane County Assistant State’s Attorney Joe Cullen told the jury that the victim, now 75, was watching TV on her couch in her first-floor apartment and McGowan broke in through her bedroom window and attacked her.

“She woke up and felt the defendant punching her in the face,” Cullen said, adding the victim told McGowan to take her money. “The defendant, you’ll see from the evidence, was there to rape her — and that’s what he did.”

Although the victim can’t identify her attacker, she doesn’t have to.

Cullen said police found McGowan’s fingerprints on the woman’s bedroom window in the 1200 block of Fleetwood Drive and on a condom wrapper on the woman’s living room floor. Police also found a condom on the couch that contained both McGowan’s and the woman’s DNA on it.

Assistant Public Defender Brenda Willett acknowledged that McGowan was staying in the area with his girlfriend, but she denied that he was the attacker.

She said McGowan voluntarily met with police after he learned authorities were looking for him. She said there will be questions about McGowan’s DNA that “will remain unanswered.”

Elgin Police officer Craig Arnold testified that he was the first on the scene and when the woman answered the door, the left side of her face was red from being struck and her eye already swollen shut.

“She had been beaten badly,” Arnold said. “She was very shaken up.”

If convicted, McGowan faces up to 30 years in prison. The trial could run until late this week.