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https://www.dispatch.com/gcdn/authoring/2015/01/08/NCOD/ghows-OH-92588f2b-6a84-45c0-a532-315d30ead70e-85c6452d.jpeg?width=200&height=241&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp
Roshawn L. Tatom

A man imprisoned for nearly 15 years for his roles in an East Side drug murder and a home invasion has been linked by DNA to a rape case from 1996.

Roshawn L. Tatom, 35, is accused of raping a 46-year-old woman who had just gotten off a COTA bus on the South Side on Feb. 13, 1996, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien said. He was indicted this week on charges of rape and kidnapping and faces up
to 25 years in prison on each count.

The woman was walking across the parking lot of Parsons Avenue Baptist Church when she was beaten unconscious, dragged to a nearby field and raped, O’Brien said.

Tatom’s identification and indictment were the result of an ongoing initiative by the Columbus police sexual-assault unit to review evidence in old cases. Detectives decided in 2013 to take advantage of an extension in the statute of limitations for
rape by reviewing unsolved rapes dating to 1993.

Forensic evidence from the 1996 rape was submitted to the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation crime lab in April. In June, investigators there matched DNA from the rape to Tatom.

According to Common Pleas Court records, Tatom was charged about 18 months after the rape with an unrelated aggravated assault. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in prison.

In December 1999, he was indicted on charges that he committed a home invasion in which 12 victims were held against their will. Six days later, he was indicted on charges including aggravated murder, accusing him of participating in the November 1999
robbery and killing of James L. Jackson.

Police said one of Tatom’s three accomplices shot Jackson during a drug robbery. Tatom was accused of shooting and wounding another person at Jackson’s house.

He pleaded guilty in 2000 to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Tatom was sentenced to another 14 years in the unrelated home invasion. But he was given three more years behind bars in 2002 after he was caught with a weapon in prison.

He was to be released next year.

tdecker@dispatch.com

@Theodore_Decker

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/crime/2015/01/08/dna-links-prisoner-to-rape/23953238007/

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