Judge sentences ‘Clover Leaf Rapist’ to prison for violent Sacramento attacks
Three women were attacked under the cover of darkness in a brutal manner and sexually assaulted over a span of a few months in 2013 and 2014 in North Sacramento County.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Maryanne G. Gilliard said JD Wallace Simien was the rapist who attacked these women before taking their identification and threatening them not to tell anyone.
Gilliard spoke about the “sustained fear” and “psychological damage” these women experienced for several years knowing their attacker was still out there with ability to tack them down online and find them.
“You are not, Mr. Simien, the typical rapist I see in Department 12,” the judge said Friday in her courtroom with some of Simien’s victims in attendance. “And for 10-plus years, these women have been looking over their shoulders terrified that you’ll come back. So, for those who have come to this court for (Simien’s) sentencing, you don’t have to look over your shoulders anymore.”
Gilliard sentenced Simien, 43, of Sacramento County to 82 years to life in prison for committing the three violent sexual assaults. These sexual assault investigations went unsolved for several years until authorities used DNA genealogy techniques to identify the suspect dubbed the “Clover Leaf Rapist.”
Simien did not speak in court during his sentencing hearing Friday afternoon. The judge was not surprised by that, saying Simien’s well-respected defense attorney, Linda Parisi, had likely already advised him not to say anything in court as she prepares to file an appeal to Simien’s guilty verdict.
Jury’s guilty verdict
Gilliard said the DNA evidence that linked Simien to the three sexually assaulted women who didn’t know each other “speaks volumes.” She told Simien that he can continue to assert his innocence, she doesn’t denigrate that, but the evidence was overwhelming.
“This was a rather resounding verdict,” the judge told Simien. “You are the rapist.”
Investigators over the years referred to the suspect, unidentified at the time, as the “Clover Leaf Rapist” because of the proximity of the crime scenes to freeway entrances and exits that resemble a cloverleaf pattern.
The investigation into the sexual assaults had gone cold until a few years ago, when investigators identified the suspect using the same DNA genealogy techniques used to identify and capture the Golden State Killer and the NorCal Rapist.
The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office announced Simien’s arrest in November 2021. Simien has been in custody since his arrest, and is now awaiting transfer to prison.
A jury on Oct. 31, found Simien guilty on two counts of kidnapping to commit another crime, two counts of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual battery by restraint and assault with intent to commit rape. His conviction included enhancements for kidnapping multiple victims and using a knife in the crimes, prosecutors said.
The defense attorney on Friday argued that enhancements on Simien’s conviction were using the facts of the crime to increase his prison sentence. Parisi also asked the judge to consider mitigating factors, such as Simien had a job, a family and no previous record of committing a violent crime.
Sexual assaults near freeway
Prosecutors said Simien attacked the first woman Dec. 10, 2013, as she walked from a bus stop to a nearby bowling alley to meet her family. The woman was grabbed from behind and dragged into the cloverleaf section of Interstate 80 and Madison Avenue, where she was strangled and raped. Her attacker then took her belongings and identification, threatening to kill her if she told the police.
On Jan. 8, 2014, Simien attacked his second victim, a woman walking with luggage to meet a friend for a ride to the airport, prosecutors said. He offered the woman a ride when she said she was lost.
In the car, Simien groped the woman, stabbed her in the neck, choked her and beat her before raping her in the same cloverleaf section of I-80 and Madison, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
On March 8, 2014, Simien attacked a third woman after picking her up in his car as she walked home from a nightclub, prosecutors said. Simien drove the woman to her apartment, then groped and strangled her as she tried to leave the car, according to the District Attorney’s Office. The woman managed to escape.
Deputy District Attorney TeriAnn Grimes, who prosecuted Simien, said he became “a serial rapist” over those few months. She said Simien went out late at night into the early hours of the following day, looking for vulnerable women to attack.
The prosecutor said Simien took personal belongings and identification from each of the victims after sexually assaulting them.
“Each of the victims indicated that they thought they were gonna die,” Grimes told the judge. “That is some of the most heinous conduct I can think of.”
The judge called these crimes “horrific” and “scary.” Gilliard said one of the women testified about how Simien used the victim’s scarf, a piece of clothing the woman liked and was meaningful to her, to try to strangle her. The judge also spoke of another victim who showed in court the scar on her neck where Simien stabbed her during the attack.
“She still has it,” the judge said about the woman’s scar. “It’s a reminder every day of what happened to her.”
DNA evidence
Samples of DNA collected in rape kits and the women’s clothing ultimately lead investigators to identify Simien as the so-called Clover Leaf Rapist.
District Attorney’s Office investigators and sheriff’s detectives used Investigative Genetic Genealogy “to develop fact-finding leads” which led them to Simien, authorities said when Simien was arrested. Officials said this was the same investigative tool used to identify Joseph James DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer, also known as East Area Rapist, and Roy Waller as the NorCal Rapist. Both men were prosecuted in Sacramento County.
DeAngelo, a former police officer who had never before been a suspect in the case, was arrested after the District Attorney’s crime lab used DNA from crime scenes to compare to DNA provided to a genealogical website. DeAngelo was convicted and sentenced last year to life in prison without parole.
Waller was sentenced last year to nearly 900 years in prison for the women he raped during a 15-year crime spree that started in 1991. Waller was convicted of 46 counts of rape and other crimes. Prosecutors described Waller, a safety specialist at UC Berkeley, as someone who maintained “rape kits,” zippered bags filled with duct tape, zip ties, handcuffs and other items used in the attacks that were found in Waller’s two storage lockers.
