Decades-Old DNA Helps Convict Parkville Man of Two 1980s Rapes

[UPDATE: Shipe sentenced to two consecutive life sentences Monday after guilty verdict. Updated story to follow.]

A 73-year-old Parkville man was found guilty and Monday for two rapes and burglaries from the 1980s that investigators linked to him using decades-old DNA and other evidence.

“Justice delayed is not justice denied,” Assistant State’s Attorney John Magee told jurors in closing arguments.

James William Shipe Sr., 73, was arrested in 2023 and charged with breaking into homes and sexually assaulting multiple women in the Cockeysville area in the late 1970s and mid-1980s. His jury trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court addressed two of those cases.

Jurors heard two days of testimony from witnesses, including the two victims, who are now in their 60s. Shipe did not testify, and the defense called no witnesses.

The jury of 10 women and two men deliberated for a total of about four hours on Friday afternoon and Monday morning before finding Shipe guilty on all charges, including two counts of first-degree rape and two counts of first-degree burglary.

Both victims were seated in the front row of the court gallery and cried as the verdicts were read. One blew a kiss to the jury, telling them “thank you” through tears. A juror blew a kiss back; another juror dabbed tears from her eyes. In the hallway, the women tearfully hugged and thanked the prosecution team.

Not long after deliberations began Friday afternoon, the jury sent a note to the judge asking whether there was additional evidence identifying Shipe other than DNA. The jurors were told to consider only the evidence presented at trial. Fingerprints and other identifying evidence from other pending cases were not presented in this trial.

Magee said in closing arguments that it was no surprise that the two women gave strikingly similar testimony because the same man was responsible for both attacks.

Charging documents describe a series of crimes beginning in 1978 in which a man entered ground-floor apartments through unlocked doors or windows, covered the mouths of women he found inside, threatened them and sexually assaulted them. In three incidents, including the two tried in this case, the rapist disconnected landline phones in the homes before leaving.

“It is absolutely remarkable that we're lucky enough to be in this position … to finally seek justice for these powerful women,” Magee said in closing arguments.

The late Dr. Rudiger Breitenecker, a physician at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, began collecting samples from rape victims in the late 1970s in hopes that the specimens might one day prove useful.

In 2008, the Baltimore County Police Department learned about the slides being stored at the hospital and began using them in cold-case investigations. In 2009, investigators used DNA evidence to link five similar rape cases in the Cockeysville area to the same unidentified male profile.

Detectives reinvestigated the cases and developed Shipe as a potential suspect.

A victim in a 1978 case had told officers that her attacker revealed his date of birth, saying he had turned 26 on the day of the attack. She also told police he gave her his first and middle names. A 2023 analysis of fingerprints collected at the 1978 crime scene concluded they matched Shipe, according to court records.

In June 2023, investigators obtained a DNA sample from Shipe for comparison with the profile recovered from evidence in the cold cases. The following month, Baltimore County Forensic Services reported that the DNA profiles matched.

Defense attorney Joe Pappafotis asked jurors to consider that many of the state’s witnesses had no direct involvement in the examinations of the victims or the testing of evidence in the case.

“What you heard in this case and what you saw was more ‘say so’ than evidence,” he said in closing arguments.

Pappafotis also asked jurors to consider that both victims apparently identified the same man from police photographs after their attacks.

“They are strangers to one another and evidently identified the same person four years apart,” he said.

The prosecution acknowledged in opening statements that there had been misidentifications early in the investigation but said charges against the man initially identified were dismissed after police investigated and determined he was not the perpetrator.

Magee countered that the DNA evidence established “to a mathematical certainty” that Shipe was the person who raped both women.

Sentencing will be today at 11:15 a.m.

This story will be updated.