Michigan man pleads no contest to 1999 rape at Oakland County golf course

OAKLAND COUNTY, Mich. (FOX 2) – A Michigan man linked to two rape cases that had gone cold for decades entered a no contest plea for one of the crimes.

According to court records, Kurt Alan Rillema, 52, pleaded no contest to third and fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct. As a result of the plea, charges of first and second-degree criminal sexual conduct were dismissed.

The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said Rillema allegedly sexually assaulted two victims in 1999 and 2000.

The first rape happened in September 1999 at Twin Lakes Golf Club in Oakland Township. The 22-year-old victim reported that she was working at a food stand on the course when a man came through the back employee door, demanded she take off her clothes, and then sexually assaulted her.

Deputies were able to obtain DNA evidence from the crime but could not identify a suspect. The DNA evidence was entered into a national DNA database.

The second assault happened in July 2000 when a 19-year-old woman who was jogging at a Penn State golf course was approached by a man with a knife and assaulted. DNA evidence was taken.

The DNA database matched the samples in 2004, authorities said, but they still did not have a suspect.

Eventually, the evidence from the Penn State case was destroyed after a period of time as permitted under state law. The evidence in the Oakland County case was preserved, though.

In July 2021, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office and Penn State police both began to look for new ways to identify a suspect, and they sent evidence from the Oakland County case to ParabonNanolabs for genetic genealogy testing.

The lab traced the genealogy as far back as the 1700s, to narrow down the list of suspects to possibly one of three brothers.

Through their investigation, they learned it was Rillema, and started surveilling him. Authorities said DNA from a coffee cup was used to confirm that Rillema was the man they were looking for.

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said Rillema has no criminal history and wasn’t even on investigators’ radar until the lab did some digging.

Rillema will be sentenced in Michigan on Jan. 15, 2025.

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