FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — An accused serial rapist who is suspected in Dekalb County attacks as far back as 1999 is under investigation in Fulton County.
Police said Wesley Cooley is suspected of attacking women for two decades.
The Dekalb County District Attorney's Office first told 11Alive last week that DNA connected Cooley to eight different attacks. Now, Atlanta Police and the Fulton County District Attorney's Office are now working on two of those cases.
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said he should have been stopped sooner.
"It is very frustrating to me that they have been allowed to remain on the streets, remain hurting women, and it's very frustrating to me that all we had to do was test these kits and much of the pain that has been caused has been eliminated," he said.
Howard said there is no excuse for untested rape kits in Georgia.
"It begins to sound like negligence, almost criminal negligence if a rape kit is available that some responsible body wouldn't get that rape kit to the GBI for evaluation," he said.
There are 156 criminal investigations in Fulton County developing from untested rape kits that were found at Grady Hospital in 2015.
Dandre Shabazz was one of those cases. He was recently given 12 life sentences for the women he attacked starting in 2002.
"He was cunning. He was cunning because he selected a certain kind of person to attack. And we believe what he figured was that once he didn't, people wouldn't care as much," he said.
Howard said the attitudes of police officers and prosecutors have evolved along with DNA testing technology, which he credits for the rise in convictions.
"There are more females involved in our sex crimes units and they are certainly are not allowing cases to be pushed to some file in a back room," he said.
Now that they have the proof to prosecute these crimes though, it's sometimes hard to find the victims after so much time has passed.
"Part of our difficulty is finding people now to come forward and to testify," he said.
However, he said it should never be too late to get justice.
"For many of these women are thinking, if I'm at the shopping mall, at church, is this person behind me, are they going to get me? The terror you inflicted on these women continues," he said.
The federal grant is only accessible for 3 years in Georgia... Howard hopes the county will continue to fund the initiative after the funds from the Department of Justice expire.
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