Mark Manteuffel admits guilt for 1990s rapes after being caught years later by DNA technique
The judge asked Mark Jeffrey Manteuffel to remove his mask Thursday, the better for his victims’ families to hear him admit what he had done.
Manteuffel, a serial rapist who hid for two decades in plain sight before DNA detective work tracked down the former federal prison guard in Georgia, pleaded guilty Thursday in a Sacramento courtroom to charges of the forcible rapes of two Sacramento women in the early 1990s.
The 60-year-old wore a resigned scowl as he peeled away his white cloth face covering to reveal himself and his crimes. The victims’ families seated in the gallery leaned forward to take in the pleas.
“Guilty,” he said, to the three counts of forcible rape and single count of sodomy. “Yes,” he answered, admitting to using a knife during the crimes. He again replied, “Yes,” in admitting to inflicting great bodily injury in the attacks.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White ordered Manteuffel to return to court Aug. 14 for sentencing. Manteuffel faces 31 years in prison on the Sacramento charges, but soon will be taken to Yolo County where he is expected to plead guilty to rape and kidnapping charges in the brutal attack on a Davis jogger in 1994.
Manteuffel’s Sacramento pleas are contingent on his pleading guilty to the Davis attack, White told him from the bench. Manteuffel also waived his right to appeal as well as all statutes of limitations as part of the agreement. With the expected Yolo plea, Manteuffel faces more than 34 years in prison.
“This will be final. You will serve the time,” White said, punctuating each word. “You understand that?”
“I understand that,” Manteuffel answered.
Manteuffel’s was the third in a blockbuster string of high-profile cases cracked by Sacramento County District Attorney’s crime lab on DNA evidence, following the arrest of NorCal Rapist suspect Roy Charles Waller and the dramatic break that led to the capture of East Area Rapist and Golden State Killer Joseph James DeAngelo.
It was only Monday that the 74-year-old DeAngelo pleaded guilty at an extraordinary hearing inside a converted Sacramento State University ballroom to the murder and rape spree that terrorized California for two decades in the 1970s and 1980s.
DeAngelo’s sentencing is set for Aug. 17. A hearing site has not yet been announced.
Prosecuting attorney Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Amy Holliday detailed the near-identical brutality of Manteuffel’s attacks in Rosemont in 1992 and in east Sacramento two years later in 1994.
He sneaked into his victims’ homes, his face hidden by a pullover mask, making his way through the air duct and attic of one house to avoid the home’s security system.
He used a heavy object to pummel his victims before cutting away their clothes with a blade, binding their hands and legs and covering their heads with pillowcases. He repeatedly raped the women at knifepoint, then filled their bathtubs with water.
Both women later said they were certain Manteuffel planned to drown them, Holliday said.
He left each with a threat. Manteuffel lived less than a mile from one of his victims.
Today, Manteuffel’s first victim is 80; his second victim has recently died, Holliday said.
But last November, the woman identified as “Jane Doe No. 2” testified as a conditional witness in the event she could not appear at trial, reliving her harrowing ordeal and Manteuffel’s threat.
“He said I should never tell the police, that he would find out if I told the police,” the woman testified from her wheelchair before Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lauren White. “He said I wouldn’t know where, I wouldn’t know when, I wouldn’t know how, but he would come back and kill me. I remember that promise the most.”
For nearly 20 years after the Sacramento and Davis attacks, Manteuffel was not a name, but a number - the long sequence of DNA numerical code that was the attacker’s only identification.
The case was also a historic first. Local officials used the DNA evidence from the rapes to obtain the first-ever DNA-based warrant issued in California. The warrant and criminal charge tied to it bought years of valuable time to connect a name to the DNA.
Investigators used the science to build family trees that led them first to Oklahoma, then Florida before arresting Manteuffel at his Decatur, Georgia home, Holliday said.
Manteuffel’s plea at downtown Sacramento’s Gordon Schaber Courthouse was met with much less fanfare than DeAngelo’s wrenching, all-day hearing before hundreds of victims, families, attorneys and reporters.
But the moment was as powerful for victims’ families and for Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, who watched Manteuffel’s plea from the far corner of the courtroom’s jury box. Schubert announced Manteuffel’s arrest and the DNA crime-solving behind it a year ago this week.
“It’s a long road for these folks. I’ve known some of these folks for 20 years,” Schubert said following the hearing. “This is a case that shows the power of DNA — a ‘John Doe’ warrant that set the standard for holding people accountable. Let’s face it, he wouldn’t have been caught. He was hiding in plain sight.”
This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 11:44 AM.
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