Accused Kentucky serial rapist found guilty of 2005 rape in Louisville
A man accused of five decades-old sexual assaults across Kentucky was convicted Sept. 11 of a 2005 rape in Jefferson County.
George Wayne Aldridge, 55, was convicted of first-degree rape. A jury recommended he serve 15 years in prison.
Aldridge was also charged in February 2023 with three abductions and sexual assaults that happened between 2009 and 2016 in Fayette County. In those cases, he is charged with two counts of first-degree rape, first-degree wanton endangerment, two counts of first-degree sodomy, three counts of adult kidnapping and two counts of first-degree sexual abuse.
And he faces adult kidnapping and first-degree sexual abuse charges in Scott County. It was not clear Tuesday when that incident happened.
Aldridge was charged — and convicted, in the Jefferson County case — using DNA evidence. Kentucky State Police forensic genealogy investigations confirmed his DNA matched the profiles in the five sexual assault cases.
Testing was done through the state’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, which is funded partially through a federal grant.
Genealogy data, sometimes mined from popular sites like 23 and Me and Ancestry, is an increasingly common tool in police investigations, opening doors to test DNA with familial matches that can lead to identification of a suspect.
Lead investigator and SAKI Detective Ben Wolcott said genealogy testing allows old cases to be resurrected and “evil-doers” to be held accountable.
“This case highlights the ability to incorporate a multi-disciplinary concept that achieves results never thought of until now,” Wolcott said. “This victim deserved our best efforts and we delivered. Justice delayed is still justice served.”
The Kentucky State Police SAKI team launched in July 2021 after the U.S. Department of Justice awarded $1.5 million to the commonwealth to leverage existing investigative resources within the state’s crime lab by transitioning investigators and a criminal intelligence analyst from the attorney general’s office to KSP.
Aldridge is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 5 in the Jefferson County case.
He has a hearing Oct. 8 in Scott County, and a hearing Nov. 6 in Fayette County.
