The woman whose face was beamed onto a TV screen at the front of a DeKalb County courtroom had waited 13 years for justice.
She spoke confidently and clearly as she read from her statement to the court via Zoom, explaining what Wesley Cooley stole from her when she was just 16 years old.
“He forced me into a car and raped me and took away my innocence and my virginity,” said the victim, who is not being identified due to the nature of the crime.
On Feb. 18, 2013, she had been sitting by herself on the bleachers of a baseball field at Miller Grove High School, intentionally away from those there for a game. She had been recently bullied at school and, alone, she began to cry. At some point, a man approached her and began to console her. The stranger, she learned later, was Wesley Cooley.
When she decided to go home, Cooley followed her and offered her a ride. She became scared and declined him several times.
“Not thinking that she would be able to get away from him, she ultimately complied and got into the vehicle,” prosecutor Agatha Romanowski said in court.
He drove to the beginning of a driveway in a subdivision and began to “overpower her, ignored her pleas to stop and raped her” in the vehicle, according to Romanowski. He then dropped her off a few blocks from her home.
During the hearing, which preceded sentencing for Cooley, the victim told the court she is now diagnosed with PTSD, requiring her to take medication.
“I will never forgive you for what you have done to me and what you have done to the other victims,” she told Cooley over Zoom.
DNA from sexual assault kits tied Cooley to nine cases spanning DeKalb, Fulton and Rockdale counties since 1999. In a 10th incident in DeKalb, the victim was able to get away before the rape happened.
Officials have described Cooley as an “alleged serial rapist” since his arrest in 2020. Just in DeKalb, his victims ranged in age from 16 to 28. They ranged from 15 to 38 across all the incidents.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
On Thursday afternoon, Cooley sat shackled at a table in front of the judge, watching on a screen as two of the victims gave their statements. A prosecutor read statements from two others.
Cooley pleaded guilty to three counts of rape, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated sodomy, criminal attempt to commit rape and aggravated assault. The 64-year-old was sentenced by a superior court judge to life without the possibility of parole.
The cases each followed a similar pattern. Officials said Cooley approached the women while they were alone, offered them a ride or other help and then drove them to another location and assaulted them.
“We understand it has been a grave impact on their lives,” Cooley’s attorney, Averick Walker, told the judge.
During the Thursday afternoon hearing, Romanowski described four incidents in DeKalb in 2012, 2013 and 2017.
On Oct. 16, 2012, an 18-year-old victim was at a bus stop when she accepted a ride from Cooley to a specific location. He instead drove her to another place and began to assault and rape her, Romanowski said.
Then there was the incident that began at Miller Grove High School, during which the prosecutor said Cooley made a comment that he thought the victim was even younger than 16.
On April 25, 2017, Cooley offered a 28-year-old woman a ride while she was walking. When she stopped at a gas station to use the restroom, she left her luggage outside. She came back to find the man putting her luggage into his vehicle. Cooley insisted on giving her a ride and she complied.
He then parked the truck in a parking lot and raped the victim before dropping her off at a mall, Romanowski said.
All three women went to DeKalb Medical and had a rape kit done. Romanowski said DNA was obtained but no suspect was identified.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
On Oct. 16, 2017, a 19-year-old woman was able to flee after Cooley assaulted and attempted to rape her. She had accepted a ride and was instead driven to a home, where she was threated unless she removed her clothing. Romanowski said she escaped and ran naked to a neighbor’s home, and the police was called.
The victim was able to provide the description of a gray Dodge SUV, and Cooley was subsequently pulled over. The victim’s purse was found in his vehicle, Romanowski explained.
He was arrested for the attempted rape, but officials said he had not yet been linked to the other incidents that had occurred in DeKalb, Fulton or Rockdale.
Then, about a year later, the original detective on the case got an update after the Georgia Sexual Assault Kit Initiative task force began to test and investigate the rape kits from similar cases. The incidents across three counties were confirmed to be the same suspect, but the suspect remained unknown.
During a review of the cases, and when compared to the attempted rape Cooley was arrested in, Romanowski said officials realized the method was similar. Authorities secured a search warrant to obtain a DNA sample from Cooley and by February 2020, he was tied to all 10 cases.
He was soon after arrested near his Conyers home.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
During a press conference after the hearing, DeKalb District Attorney Sherry Boston said that part of the reason it long so long to identify Cooley was because of previously backlogged sexual assault kits. The Georgia Sexual Assault Kit Initiative task force was established in 2018 and relies on the GBI’s efforts to test those kits.
The push to test a backlog of nearly 10,000 sexual assault kits started after more than 1,300 kits were found in 2015 in storage at Grady Memorial Hospital, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. The 2016 legislature responded by passing a law requiring all Georgia law enforcement agencies to send stored rape kits to the GBI for testing. The number of evidence packages quickly grew and continued to come in each month.
The kits are used for gathering and preserving evidence from sexual assaults by collecting a DNA sample. For a match to be possible, a suspect’s DNA must be available for law enforcement, which only happens once it’s put into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, when someone is convicted of certain crimes.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
According to the GBI, 516 sexual assault kits are currently pending. A little over 300 of those are considered backlogged, meaning they’ve been in the lab for more than 30 days, though some of those are currently being tested, agency spokesperson Sara Lue said Thursday.
Boston said the initiative allows district attorney offices like hers to “test these old kits so that we can use leads to try to identify these perpetrators — many of whom we know are serial rapists.”
Cooley’s cases in Fulton and Rockdale remain open. In Fulton, he was indicted March 2021 on charges of rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment, aggravated sodomy, and impersonating a public officer or employee. He had not been indicted in Rockdale but was arrested and charged with two counts of rape.
Boston said those jurisdictions have been waiting to see how the DeKalb cases finalized. She explained how her office has worked tirelessly to get justice for the victims and that many of them thought Cooley would never even have been identified.
“We are grateful that here in DeKalb we have solidified that Mr. Cooley will be not exiting the prison,” she said.
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