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Katie McCarthy (left) and Cindy Hunt comfort each other after meeting for the first time on Nov. 4, 2021, in Summerville. McCarthy and Hunt were raped at knifepoint by an attacker authorities say is the same man. Lauren Petracca/Staff
Maurice Prioleau. Charleston County Sheriff's Office/Provided
Lee Ansaldo describes her experience with law enforcement after being sexually assaulted in 2006, at her home Jan. 7, 2022, in Charleston. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
Cindy Hunt sits with her dog, Tater, in front of her home on Oct. 14, 2021, in Hanahan. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
Katie McCarthy looks out from a rocking chair on her front porch among the greenery she’s planted over the years at her home on Aug. 11, 2021, in Summerville. McCarthy was the victim of a sexual assault in 2018. The defendant, Maurice Prioleau, faces other similar charges dating to before her attack. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
Lee Ansaldo describes her experience with law enforcement after being sexually assaulted in 2006, at her home on Jan. 7, 2022, in Charleston. The investigation into Ansaldo’s rape was inactive for more than 10 years, despite DNA evidence. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
LOCATION OF ASSAULTS: Lee Ansaldo met her offender 2 miles away from where Cindy Hunt first encountered her assailant and 3 miles from where Katie McCarthy was assaulted. (SOURCE: ESRI)
Katie McCarthy (left) and Cindy Hunt comfort each other after meeting for the first time on Nov. 4, 2021, in Summerville. McCarthy and Hunt were raped at knifepoint by an attacker authorities say is the same man. Lauren Petracca/Staff
Katie McCarthy and Cindy Hunt sat in the middle of Summerville’s Hutchinson Square in October. The two were meeting for the first time.
The bench they shared held the weight of Hunt and McCarthy’s anxiety — their worries of not knowing what the other person would be like or whether they should speak candidly of what happened to them.
After a hesitant hug and a few minutes of small talk, McCarthy, 35, turned to Hunt, 58.
“Did you think you were going to die?” she asked Hunt. “I thought I was going to die.”
Hunt paused, digging back into her memory. “I mean, he had a knife to my eye the whole time,” she said. “The whole time. That’s my worst fear, not being able to see.”
Hunt and McCarthy wrapped their arms around each other's shoulders. They share a grim bond. Police say the same man raped them, according to investigative reports, arrest-warrant affidavits and criminal indictments connected to their cases.
That suspect, Maurice Prioleau, awaits trial in both women’s assaults.
Maurice Prioleau. Charleston County Sheriff's Office/Provided
“Maurice looks forward to his opportunity to finally have 12 impartial jurors hear all the evidence about what really happened August 13, 2018,” Rodney Davis, a Charleston County public defender, wrote on behalf of Prioleau in connection to McCarthy's case.
A second defense attorney representing Prioleau in Hunt's case did not respond to a request for comment.
McCarthy and Hunt were both assaulted in the summer of 2018.
Hunt said she was raped at knifepoint by a man she invited back to her home in Wando. A man repeatedly assaulted McCarthy outside the North Charleston Liberty Mall Shopping Center, she said.
Both women underwent sexual assault examinations. Investigators then sent DNA evidence collected during their exams to state authorities, along with other evidence gathered from the crime scenes.
From there, those authorities checked to see whether the DNA matched any prior felony offenders in an FBI database used by law enforcement agencies across the country.
Officials wrote in two arrest-warrant affidavits that Prioleau was a match in both cases.
Police wrote in a third affidavit that they found Prioleau’s DNA linked to another assault — one that deputies already knew about.
In 2007, the State Law Enforcement Division told the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office that Prioleau’s DNA was recovered from a sexual assault case that occurred the year before at a mobile home park in North Charleston, according to a statement written by a sheriff's spokesman.
But sheriff’s detectives never followed up on the lead. The case lay dormant for more than a decade.
The woman in that case, Lee Ansaldo, did not speak with law enforcement about her assault again until a deputy showed up at her door in 2018.
And, after all this time, Ansaldo wonders: If investigators contacted her sooner, would McCarthy and Hunt have been spared?
The Post and Courier spent six months collecting more than 100 documents through open-records requests, investigative files and public archives. During that time, three survivors of sexual assault were interviewed, along with experts and members of the local law enforcement agencies who investigated these cases.
The findings: The women's trauma did not end at their rapes. Their grief, they said, also stems from problems that arose during the investigations into their connected cases — beginning when law enforcement found Lee Ansaldo naked from the waist down and bound by cords.
Police arrived a little more than an hour after she was violated and abused at a mobile home on Dunlap Street in North Charleston. Charleston County deputies Richard Heileman and Scott Rywelski detailed what Ansaldo claimed happened in incident reports:
Ansaldo, then 44, was looking to buy crack cocaine on Kimbell Road around 7 a.m.
A man approached her, offering crack for $20. Ansaldo, the man and another person on the roadway smoked it.
Ansaldo, who struggled with addiction, wanted more. She got in the man’s car, leaving the other person behind. They drove to his dealer's place to buy the drug, though they were told to come back later.
The two went to her mobile home to kill time, watching TV in her living room. There was no one else home.
When she went to use the restroom, he followed her and said she had to have sex with him. He grabbed her and pushed her onto a bed in the adjacent room. He bound her hands with an electrical cord and her feet with a telephone cord.
Then he took her television, some DVDs and left.
Ansaldo said she hobbled outside and screamed for her neighbors to call 911.
Heileman, Rywelski, alongside other law enforcement, arrived around 9:30 a.m. Ansaldo told deputies she was looking to buy crack, and admitted to smoking the drug before getting into the man's car.
She was distraught, but deputies convinced her to go to the hospital for a sexual assault exam.
Lee Ansaldo describes her experience with law enforcement after being sexually assaulted in 2006, at her home Jan. 7, 2022, in Charleston. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
During such an exam, doctors take samples from a survivor’s body and put them into a kit to preserve evidence of the rape, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.
It is an hourslong, invasive, head-to-toe external process that also can include an internal examination of the victim’s genital area. Nurses can take samples of blood, urine, hair and swabs of body surface areas.
Forensic labs operated by SLED then analyze specimens and other evidence collected at the crime scene for DNA samples. They enter identified samples into the FBI’s national DNA database, CODIS, to check for a match to prior convicted offenders and those arrested in felony crimes in South Carolina and elsewhere.
Kits aren’t always immediately tested. Their path forward depends on the victim’s report, the type of assault and the quality of evidence collected in the exam, The Post and Courier reported in 2020. Labs often prioritize the most violent crimes or the ones that involve a current danger to public safety.
This hard evidence is important to help investigators put together rape cases.
Yet victims’ accounts are just as essential, said Kaitlin Boyle, a criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina.
It may take multiple interviews before a victim’s trust is earned, though Boyle argues those repeated conversations are important for victims to believe their cases are treated seriously.
“If survivors don't think the procedures of investigating a sexual assault are fair, they're not going to report rape there because they feel like nothing is going to be done,” she said.
Sex-crimes investigators should make survivors feel as though they have a voice in the process, she said.
But Ansaldo did not remain in contact with deputies — they lost touch.
Deputies submitted evidence in Ansaldo's case to SLED's queue. More than a year after her rape, Rywelski wrote in a report that a detective went to Ansaldo's mobile home at some point between September 2006 and September 2007.
When the detective arrived, Ansaldo had moved out and neighbors did not know where she had gone. It's unclear at what point in the year after her rape the detective went to her home, based on reports filed in her case.
Ansaldo's account was critical, the Sheriff's Office said. So investigators requested the case be marked inactive on Sept. 17, 2007.
SLED agents soon processed the evidence in Ansaldo’s case, telling the Sheriff’s Office about two months later that there was a DNA hit matching Prioleau, according to a statement written by the Sheriff's Office. Deputies were still not in contact with the victim, and the case remained cold.
Around the same time, the Sheriff’s Office received a DNA hit in a separate sexual assault case connected to Prioleau from Sept. 2, 2006, according to a supplemental report in the case. Detectives arrested him that November, though he was found not guilty when the case went to trial in 2010.
In December 2007, Prioleau was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct in an April 2006 case. He pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and battery in 2010 and was sentenced to about three years in prison, concurrent to time he had already served.
He did not have to register as a sex offender as part of the plea deal.
Prioleau was arrested in 2012 in another sexual assault case and he was cleared in 2014.
As the bevy of charges worked their way through the court system, it is unclear what measures — if any — detectives took to try to find Ansaldo. Her case, including processed evidence and a DNA match, would sit idle for 11 years.
Investigators still had not reopened Ansaldo’s case when Cindy Hunt was raped.
Hunt, who was 54 at the time, came in contact with a man behind a fast-food restaurant near the corner of Remount Road and Rivers Avenue, based on police reports written in the case. The two struck up a conversation.
Tri-County S.P.E.A.K.S.: Sexual assault services for Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
She recognized him from the neighborhood but didn't know his name. He said it was Timothy.
He asked Hunt whether she wanted to light up a blunt. She said sure and drove him to her mobile home in the Wando area — about a 20-minute drive from North Charleston, tucked away from the street and encircled by shrubbery.
They sat in her bedroom and smoked pot while Hunt’s roommate and his brother lingered on the other side of the home. When her roommate and his brother went outside, her attacker made a move.
The man grabbed Hunt from behind and held a knife to her eyes.
“He said: ‘Don't say a word,’” she recalled. “I stood there looking right out my door and looking at my roommate. There was not a thing I could do. And it just went from there.”
The man raped Hunt, according to the case's incident report. The two brothers — who did not see what was happening — left the property.
The man then bound Hunt's hands and feet with cords from a gaming console. He took her smart television, grabbed her keys and left with her car.
Hunt shimmied herself across the floor, grabbed her phone and dialed 911. Two female deputies from the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office showed up at her mobile home.
She lay naked and bound while deputies examined the scene to ensure no one else was inside the home, Hunt said. They took photos of her hands and ankles before removing the cords.
“I just wanted to put some clothes on,” she said.
Capt. Michael Crumley, head of investigations at the Sheriff's Office, said he could imagine how difficult it would be for victims to lay exposed while deputies collect evidence. He also acknowledged the need for empathy in these cases.
“In any situation, the safety and wellness of the victim take precedence over any collection of evidence,” Crumley said. “But we’re always going to try to preserve evidence, if at all possible, as long as it does not jeopardize the victim in any way.”
Anne Coughlin, a University of Virginia law professor who focuses on criminal investigations and rape, said collecting of evidence can be hard on survivors and could lead to a perception of judgment — even if investigators don't harbor disparaging opinions. It all goes back to the amount of attention these cases can put on survivors.
“You've just been raped or sexually assaulted,” Coughlin said. “And you're going to go through the investigation process, which requires a focus on your body as the site of the crime.”
Hunt's body could have contained evidence that would help the investigation. Later that morning, she went to the hospital for a sexual assault exam.
Deputies picked up her kit and submitted it to SLED within a week of the assault, Crumley said. Hunt would then wait for agents to process the evidence.
Days, weeks and months went by until a full year had passed without a DNA hit. She began to lose hope there would ever be an arrest, let alone a conviction, in the case.
Cindy Hunt sits with her dog, Tater, in front of her home on Oct. 14, 2021, in Hanahan. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
Hunt grew ashamed. She had to leave her job and moved back in with her mother.
“You're alone in this and it gets to you,” Hunt said.
She knew there were other survivors of assault in her area — maybe even other women attacked by her same assailant, though she had never sought to contact them. Hunt wanted to move on.
Katie McCarthy, then 31, was raped two months after Hunt’s sexual assault exam. This time, the North Charleston Police Department investigated the case.
Jerry Jellico, now a Charleston-area deacon, was a detective who worked on McCarthy’s assault before retiring from the department. He wore his clerical collar when discussing McCarthy’s case in September in his church’s basement.
CODIS is a powerful tool for solving sex crimes, but it is not the only one.
The FBI launched a database in 1985 called the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program — ViCAP for short — that tracks sex crimes across the United States.
Law enforcement agencies can upload information to ViCAP about their solved and unsolved cases: motive, clues, evidence and any other details in the investigation. The database is designed to help connect different agencies to help pin down serial offenders.
It could be helpful in Charleston County. The Lowcountry is a transient area where people frequently cross law enforcement jurisdictions. North Charleston itself sits in Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties.
Yet local agencies don’t consistently use the resource.
The National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, a grant program funded by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance to help address sexual assault kit backlogs across the country, requires participating agencies to upload case information to ViCAP.
Various agencies across 40 states have received grant funding. Despite its extensive backlog, South Carolina is one of 10 states that does not participate in the program.
Investigators at the Charleston County Sheriff's Office are aware of the system but have not used ViCAP for any cases in recent memory.
A spokeswoman for the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office said she did not believe the agency uses the database.
North Charleston police said they use the database when necessary and when the overall investigation can benefit from it, though they refrained from further detail.
Jellico noted the patterns woven among cases seemingly connected to a single person: a knife, an alias, offering drugs, stealing property.
“All the cases are the same,” Jellico opined. “It’s the same thing every time. Every time.”
McCarthy’s assailant approached her at about 9 p.m. near the Liberty Mall Shopping Center on Rivers Avenue and Harley Street, according to a police report in the case. He assaulted her twice — once in her car and then behind a nearby building.
"He had a box cutter knife on my throat and told me to get in my car," McCarthy said. "So I did."
Her case presented to Jellico something the others had not: a recording of her assault.
While in the car, she was able to distract her assailant and call her ex-boyfriend, John Willis. He answered, quickly realizing what was happening. Willis muted his phone and recorded the call with his tablet.
He listened in silence for eight minutes while McCarthy was assaulted.
"I've since heard that recording,” McCarthy said. “I sound a lot more scared than I had thought I did. I thought I was very composed. But the last thing you hear is me begging the man not to kill me.”
Miles away, Ansaldo’s case languished. And Hunt’s evidence kit was still on a shelf, waiting to be processed.
After assaulting McCarthy, the man stole her car and left, reports show. Willis called the police and gave them the recording.
LOCATION OF ASSAULTS: Lee Ansaldo met her offender 2 miles away from where Cindy Hunt first encountered her assailant and 3 miles from where Katie McCarthy was assaulted. (SOURCE: ESRI)
McCarthy went to the hospital for an exam after her assault.
Almost two weeks after McCarthy was assaulted, she identified Prioleau as her attacker in a photographic lineup composed of six people, an arrest-warrant affidavit said.
Given the nature of the crime, North Charleston police told SLED to make evidence in McCarthy's case a priority. Police found out Prioleau’s DNA matched evidence collected from McCarthy's car within a month of her rape, the affidavit said.
McCarthy is thankful she got the genetic match quickly, though she also feels grief. She knows Ansaldo and Hunt did not get the same promptness in their cases.
Jellico said North Charleston police sometimes would call the SLED lab and ask for an expedited testing process in cases such as McCarthy's rape.
The stakes are high. Jellico said there might be consequences for not connecting the dots if a serial rapist is involved.
“The animal who did this to one woman is going to do it again,” he predicted.
Katie McCarthy looks out from a rocking chair on her front porch among the greenery she’s planted over the years at her home on Aug. 11, 2021, in Summerville. McCarthy was the victim of a sexual assault in 2018. The defendant, Maurice Prioleau, faces other similar charges dating to before her attack. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
Ansaldo heard an unexpected knock on her door. It announced a visit she had longed for since 2006.
Charleston County Deputy Barry Goldstein stood in front of her home.
Goldstein told Ansaldo the sheriff's office wanted to do a final cheek swab of her DNA.
Aside from delays in law enforcement investigations, there are delays in the judicial system. McCarthy, Ansaldo and Hunt have been awaiting their assailant’s trial for at least three years.
The time between sexual assault arrest to disposition over the past decade, whether by plea or trial, has grown much longer, said Sarah Ford, the legal director for South Carolina Victim Assistance Network since 2017.
Ford recognizes delays were exacerbated in light of COVID-19 physical distancing parameters but felt the pandemic is not the reason they exist.
“Victims are sometimes retraumatized by the judicial system,” she said. “The victim is ready to testify, and then there is an evidentiary issue. Delay. Then there is a scheduling issue, or there are some photos that weren't turned in on time. Delay. Delay.”
Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said her office has 16 victim advocates to help support all survivors through these cases. But advocates do not fix a backlog.
“The court’s backlog is a serious concern for all cases involving victims but especially those involving rape and domestic violence,” Wilson said. “They simply must be prioritized as the court finds its way through the mountain of cases.”
North Charleston police had already charged Prioleau that September with two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, kidnapping and possession of a weapon during a violent crime in McCarthy's case.
Cold-case detectives with the Sheriff’s Office reopened Ansaldo's case after North Charleston's investigation.
The Sheriff’s Office said in a statement it did not investigate the case between 2007 and 2018 because deputies had no contact with Ansaldo, though she claims she had lived in the Charleston area the whole time.
Ansaldo, now 60, sat in the sunroom of her house in January, recounting her assault.
It’s been a long time since she was raped, but she still remembers.
“I was being strangled,” she said. “I was being slapped really hard. I was being threatened that if I said or did anything, he was going to kill me.”
Ansaldo's case leaves her with a question — one that can never be answered. Would Hunt and McCarthy's circumstances be different if Ansaldo and deputies connected sooner?
She did not know police had determined that the DNA in her case matched the DNA in other cases until January, when The Post and Courier contacted her.
Lee Ansaldo describes her experience with law enforcement after being sexually assaulted in 2006, at her home on Jan. 7, 2022, in Charleston. The investigation into Ansaldo’s rape was inactive for more than 10 years, despite DNA evidence. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
Hearing about the other women, Ansaldo said she never felt as though law enforcement advocated for her case.
“Nobody ever offered me a chance to do anything that would be for my benefit and have some respect for me as a human being,” she said. “I may have been an addict, but if nothing else, I am just a damn human being. They just tossed my case aside.”
Ansaldo, who said she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, has worked hard to piece her life back together. She said she was on top of taking her prescribed medication and staying sober for about 10 years.
Through it all, she tried not to dwell on her assault. It was one of the darkest moments in her life.
“Talking about this brings up stuff I thought I buried long ago,” she said. “Strange how quickly it can all come back.”
Less than a week after the deputy swabbed Ansaldo’s cheek, Prioleau was charged with kidnapping and first-degree sexual conduct in her case.
SLED informed the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office on July 10 that Prioleau’s DNA matched the evidence found in Hunt's sexual assault exam, according to a supplemental report in the case.
He was charged with kidnapping, first-degree sexual conduct and possession of a weapon during a violent crime in Hunt’s case on July 30, 2019, which was more than a year after her assault.
Prioleau is expected to face a trial in McCarthy and Ansaldo’s cases on March 28. He is still awaiting trial in Hunt's case.
In the meantime, McCarthy and Hunt said their meeting helped them heal, even though they only spoke for an hour or so. They hope to meet Ansaldo at the March trial.
Ansaldo is interested in knowing them — two strangers who may understand her like no one else. It would be nice for her to do something for herself in all of this, she said.
Evidence processed in Ansaldo’s case might have contained the key to identifying her attacker, but law enforcement officers sat on the DNA match for more than a decade. In that time, Prioleau was accused of raping multiple women.
Ansaldo said she planned to attend his trial. It has been 16 years, but she has yet to lose faith.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to correct Prioleau's charges in the cases involving Hunt and Ansaldo.
Follow Olivia Diaz on Twitter @oliviardiaz.
Olivia Diaz covers crime, courts and breaking news in the Charleston area. She is a Connecticut native who studied journalism at the University of Richmond. Phone: (843) 800-0437. ProtonMail: oliviardiaz@protonmail.com.
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