Raleigh police make arrest in 2001 sexual assault case. Here’s how they did it.
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- Investigators arrested 48-year-old Reginald Taylor in Orange County, Virginia, Friday.
- Taylor faces charges including first-degree rape, sexual offense, kidnapping and robbery.
- Police matched DNA from a 2001 Raleigh sexual assault to Taylor in May.
Nearly a quarter of a century after two people were sexually assaulted at gunpoint in Raleigh, investigators found their alleged attacker in Virginia.
Reginald Taylor, 48, was arrested Friday in Orange County, Virginia — roughly four hours north of Raleigh — in connection the December 2001 incident, the Raleigh Police Department said in a news release.
Taylor is charged with first-degree rape, first-degree sexual offense, possession of a firearm by a felon and two counts each of first-degree kidnapping and robbery with a dangerous weapon.
On Dec. 10, 2001, police were called to the 7700 block of Mourning Dove Road in North Raleigh, after a man and a woman were “intercepted” by a man who forced them at gunpoint to undress, police said. The attacker then allegedly raped the woman before fleeing.
The victims, a married couple, were walking on Mourning Dove Road about 12:30 a.m. when a man stopped them to ask for a cigarette, The News & Observer reported at the time. The man then pulled out a shotgun and forced the couple to walk behind some nearby townhomes, where he assaulted the woman while he forced her husband to lay on the ground, according to the article.
The suspect took off with the couple’s clothes, the 2001 article states.
How police connected suspect to crime
Investigators linked the assault to a similar incident in Charlotte, also in 2001. Police submitted clothing from both crime scenes to the Department of Justice State Crime Laboratory for DNA testing, according to the Raleigh Police Department.
A hit came back May 8 of this year, when the crime lab notified police Taylor’s DNA matched the evidence. Raleigh police worked with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia and the U.S. Marshals Service to arrest Taylor, a news release said.
Court records show Taylor was charged in June 2005 with first-degree rape and a first-degree sexual offense in a September 2004 incident in Charlotte, but prosecutors dismissed the charges in October 2005. It’s not clear why those charges were dismissed.
This is a breaking story and will be updated as more information is released.
This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 3:46 PM.
