Four Decades Later, Women Testify Against Man Accused in Cockeysville Cold-Case Rapes

On the night in 1986 that a man broke into her home and raped her, she was 21, living on her own for the first time and sharing an apartment in Cockeysville with a friend.

Her roommate was at work, and it was a warm September night. The apartment’s air conditioning was broken, so she had opened the sliding glass door, leaving the screen closed so her kitten wouldn’t get out.

She had taken a shower and blown her hair dry. She contemplated trimming her bangs. When she walked out of the bathroom to get a pair of scissors, someone grabbed her from behind and clamped a hand tightly over her mouth and nose.

It was a naked man in his 30s, tan and muscular, with slicked-back hair and a short beard. He told her he would kill her if she screamed. He raped her on the waterbed.

Forty years later, she took the stand in a Baltimore County courtroom, one of two women, now in their 60s, who testified Thursday against the man police say attacked them.

James William Shipe Sr., 73, of Parkville, is charged with breaking into homes and sexually assaulting multiple women in the Cockeysville area in the late 1970s and mid-1980s. He is on trial this week in two of those cases.

Shipe was arrested in 2023 after police investigating the cold cases linked him to five rapes using DNA, fingerprints and other evidence, according to charging documents.

The first witness told the jury that, at first, she thought someone was playing a joke when they grabbed her from behind at her apartment on Barrett's Delight Drive.

“I thought, this is not funny,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “If this is somebody playing a joke, this is NOT funny.”

After the man raped her and left, she said, she reached for the phone and discovered that its cord had been unplugged from the wall jack.

In court Thursday, Shipe listened to testimony from the two women and showed little visible reaction.

Police say Shipe was arrested in 1998 in the same area of Cockeysville on a “peeping Tom” charge. Court records show he received a 30-day suspended sentence. A 1986 indecent exposure charge against him was not prosecuted, according to court records.

Jurors saw black-and-white crime scene photos taken inside both apartments. One showed an iron that one of the women had armed herself with after the attack, sitting in an upholstered chair not far from the sliding door.

Jurors also heard from another woman who police say was raped in her Cockeysville studio apartment exactly four years earlier, on Sept. 13, 1982.

She had been reading and watching television in her ground-floor apartment and had fallen asleep on the floor because her pullout sofa bed was uncomfortable.

Around 2 a.m., she was awakened by the sound of someone coming in to the apartment on Windy Cliff Place. She looked up and saw a man crouching behind her ironing board.

At first, she said, she thought the man needed help.

“He told me to be quiet and I wouldn’t get hurt,” she said. “That’s when I noticed that the zipper on his pants was down and I realized he was not there for help.”

As he left after sexually assaulting her, she said, he warned her: “No cops. No screaming. If you do, you’ll never see the light of day.”

The man smelled of motor oil and had a pack of cigarettes rolled up in one sleeve of his T-shirt, she said.

After he left, she pulled her phone into the bathroom and locked the door. The cord connecting the handset to the phone had been disconnected, she said.

During the investigation, she picked a man from a lineup whom she believed was her attacker. Investigators arrested him but later determined they had the wrong person, and the charges were dismissed.

“Even after that, Baltimore County Police never gave up on solving this case,” Assistant State’s Attorney Stacy Amparo told the jury in opening statements.

Investigators said the five cases shared similarities in descriptions of the assailant and the way the attacks were carried out. All occurred within a one-mile radius.

Charging documents describe a series of crimes beginning in 1978 in which a man entered homes through unlocked doors or windows, covered the mouths of women he found inside, threatened them and sexually assaulted them. In three cases, the man disconnected landline phones before leaving.

One victim told police that the man who raped her wore an ID bracelet bearing the name “Jim.”

She also said the man talked to her after the assault, telling her that Dec. 3, 1978, the day of the attack, was his 26th birthday and that his first and middle names were James William.

More than one victim described the attacker as wearing a blue windbreaker.

Each of the women underwent a sexual assault examination after reporting the attacks. Evidence collected during those examinations was tested years later, and police said the same male DNA profile was recovered in four of the cases.

Fingerprints collected from one crime scene were re-examined in May 2023 and matched Shipe, according to police. The following month, investigators obtained a DNA sample from Shipe to compare with the profile recovered from evidence in the cold cases. In July 2023, Baltimore County Forensic Services reported that the profiles matched, according to charging documents.

Ampara also told jurors about a pioneering doctor at Greater Baltimore Medical Center who began preserving evidence from sexual assault victims in the late 1970s in hopes that advances in science would someday allow it to be used to identify their attackers.

GBMC emergency room physician Dr. Rudiger Breitenecker recognized the potential value of preserving evidence from sexual assault victims on microscope slides, she said.

“Dr. Breitenecker knew that eventually technology would advance to the point where they were able to test samples taken from victims of sexual assault and find the individuals who committed those assaults,” Amparo said.

Shipe’s attorney, Joe Pappafotis, reminded jurors that his client is presumed innocent and urged them to scrutinize the prosecution’s case.

“I ask you to look with a critical eye at every piece of evidence that the State brings to you and every testimony that you hear from the witness stand,” he said. “That’s all we can ask.”

Testimony is scheduled to resume Friday.