KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A man convicted of strangling another man in southwestern Missouri in 2013 had raped a woman days earlier but avoided arrest at the time by insisting the sex was consensual, authorities allege in now charging him with rape.
Greene County prosecutors charged Sean David Roberson, 27, on Tuesday, telling the Springfield News-Leader the delay in filing the charge was because lab tests weren't completed until late last year and the extensive investigation took time to review.
Prosecutors did not immediately return telephone messages Friday from The Associated Press. Online court records don't show whether Roberson has an attorney.
A Springfield police investigator's probable cause statement included with Tuesday's criminal complaint alleges that on March 23, 2013, a woman identified as "D.C." secretly scrawled a note on paper towel in a Springfield convenience store, saying she had been kidnapped and attacked by a man threatening to kill her.
"Please help I have a baby," read the note, which included Roberson's address.
When questioned by police after the note was found, Roberson claimed his sexual interactions with the woman that day in his car and apartment were consensual, according to the probable cause statement. Roberson willingly gave the officer his shirt, underwear and bed sheets for lab testing, the investigator wrote.
The woman told police Roberson repeatedly threatened suicide that day, once pledging to drive them off a cliff. The woman later rebuffed Roberson's demand that she stab him with a kitchen knife he handed her, and she said he tried to hang himself with a bed sheet before she managed to escape his apartment, the investigator wrote.
Roberson was not arrested. Six days later, Roberson strangled 18-year-old Andros Valentin-Vargas, whose body was found in a bathtub of his brother's Branson apartment. Police said Roberson fled after the brother returned home and found Roberson holding a knife.
He was charged with first-degree murder, but a Greene County jury that heard the case on a venue change convicted him last October of voluntary manslaughter, assault, armed criminal action and robbery. Roberson testified he killed Valentin-Vargas in self-defense.
Roberson was sentenced in December to multiple 15-year terms and is imprisoned at a state lockup in Licking, Missouri.