WARSAW, Ind. (WANE) – The California man who was convicted last month of raping a woman in Warsaw 22 years ago has been sentenced.
Rodriguez Todd, 53, of La Mesa, Calif., was sentenced to 80 years in prison on Tuesday for crimes a judge called “despicable.”
Todd was sentenced last month in Kosciusko High Court for rape and kidnapping.
It was November 23, 1999, between 7 and 8 p.m., when a woman said she was abducted by a man with a fake beard and mustache at a Shell gas station in Warsaw. The woman said she was traveling from Logansport, where she lived, to Ligonier to visit her critically ill father when she stopped to check his transmission fluid, according to the Kosciusko County District Attorney’s Office.
At the gas station, as the woman grabbed the transmission gauge, the man approached her, showed her a knife and said, “Let’s take a walk,” the prosecutor’s office said.
The man then forced her into his car and drove her to a wooded area, where he raped her twice.
An hour later, the weeping woman realized the man was gone and she returned home to Logansport.
The woman had a sexual assault kit collected and the evidence was turned over to the Indiana State Police. The case, however, remained cold until 2019.
In April 2019, state police found a match between Todd and the collected DNA. Todd was tracked to San Diego, California, and a warrant was served.
In a police interview, Todd said he lived in South Bend in 1999 and worked as a probation officer. He said he had several “one-night stands” and “often had sex in a car, usually in the woods or in an isolated place”, detailed the prosecution.
Todd’s DNA tests showed “very strong support” that he was a suspect in the 1999 rape, the prosecutor’s office said.
Prior to trial, the woman said she was “willing and wanted to ‘nail him’ for what he did to her,” the prosecutor’s office said.
During sentencing on Tuesday, the victim submitted a written impact statement in which she said she had spent “more than twenty years … with the pain, suffering and fear of this rapist.” She said she had to relive the rape again in court.
Prosecutor Dan Hampton told the court the victim had been living a nightmare since 1999.
“She must have looked over her shoulder because the rapist hadn’t been caught yet,” Hampton said.
He added: “Now that Rodriguez Rodd has been arrested, he needs to be held accountable.”
He will now probably die in prison.
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