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Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy announced today that a grand jury on Wednesday indicted 52-year-old convicted rapist Timothy J. Buzbee on 10 counts related to four separate rapes that occurred between 1977 and 1980.
Buzbee is serving three concurrent life sentences in the Maryland Correctional Institute in Jessup for three separate rapes he committed between 1981 and 1982. He is suspected of committing up to 16 rapes in the Aspen Hill and Wheaton area in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
"With the number of cases we suspected he was involved in, this didn't come as a great surprise to a lot of folks," Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said during a press conference in the lobby of the Montgomery County Circuit Court building in Rockville.
Police and prosecutors in the cold case unit investigated the four rapes and found they had similarities, including the circumstances and suspect description, Manger said.
DNA evidence collected at the crime scenes was analyzed and found to have come from a single person. That person's DNA profile was run through the Maryland Convicted Offenders DNA Database and was matched to Buzbee's profile, Manger said.
A DNA sample was taken from Buzbee on April 8, 2009 to confirm the DNA match, according to District Court charging documents.
A lab confirmed Buzbee's DNA profile matched that of the DNA evidence from the four rapes between 1977 and 1980, the documents say.
"These rapes occurred significantly earlier than the ones Buzbee was convicted for," Manger said.
The four new rapes occurred in April 1977 on Venice Drive in the White Oak area of Silver Spring, in June 1978 on Baylor Avenue in Rockville, in January 1979 on Bluehill Road in Wheaton and in August 1980 on Norbeck Road in Rockville.
All four victims have been contacted and have indicated they are willing to assist in bringing Buzbee back to trial, McCarthy said.
"Victims are typically very grateful [when cold cases are solved]," Manger said. "In fact, it helps them reconcile some of the emotions they've been feeling over the years."
DNA evidence was first admitted in a Maryland case in 1987, well after Buzbee was convicted of the first three sexual attacks.
Robbery and the use of a handgun in the commission of a crime were among the other charges included in the indictment.
No trial date has been set, but McCarthy said that information should become available in about a week. No attorney's name was listed on state online court records for Buzbee.
