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For decades, police in Shelby County, Ind. have failed to identify the man who broke into homes at night, armed with a knife or gun, woke his victims and then tied them up and sexually tortured them. He often disguised in a thick coat and covered his face with a ski mask or leggings.
Then, in 2020, 35 years after his last known attack on the county, investigators were finally able to identify the attacker as Steven Ray Hessler and arrested him. Prosecutors said the breakthrough came when Mr. Hessler licked DNA from the envelope of a water bill that matched DNA left at the last known crime scene in the county on August 17, 1985.
On Friday, Mr. Hessler, 59, was sentenced to 650 years in prison. The sentence came a month after the jury convicted Mr Hessler of two counts of rape, six illegal misconduct, seven counts of theft resulting in bodily injury, three counts of felony misconduct and one robbery.
James B. Landwerlen, prosecutor for Shelby County in southeast Indianapolis, said that from August 14, 1982 to August 17, 1985, Mr. Hessler brutally assaulted 10 victims: including seven women, a 16-year-old girl, and a former Marine. The two men handcuffed, tied up and beat him with a gun, leaving him in a coma for months.
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