A man tied by DNA testing to three rape cases in Hamilton County dating as far back as 1999 pleaded guilty in court on Friday.
William Blankenship was arrested in February 2020 after investigators found him when DNA from an ancestry site matched DNA collected in rape kits.
After DNA linked Blankenship to the Hamilton County crimes, testing further tied him to additional crimes in Northern Kentucky. In July 2021, Blankenship was charged with the rape of six additional victims in Campbell County, some dating as far back as the 1980s.
Blankenship was charged in Hamilton County with three counts of burglary, four counts of rape, two counts of kidnapping and two counts of gross sexual imposition. He pleaded guilty to the three counts of rape; the remaining charges against him in Hamilton County were dismissed.
According to officials, all three incidents Blankenship was linked to occurred in the areas of Mt. Washington and Anderson Township. A press release from then-Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters in 2020 said that on July 25, 1999, a woman was attacked in her apartment.
On August 14, 2001, a young girl was sleeping with friends in a pop-up trailer in her driveway; Blankenship allegedly took her out of the trailer and carried her into an open field near her home, where he attacked her. On Oct. 10, 2001, Blankenship allegedly attacked a teenage girl in her bedroom.
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