Man sentenced to life in prison after confessing to multiple sexual assaults in North Texas – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

A serial rapist who admitted to multiple home invasions and sexual assaults in North Texas over a nearly decade-long period will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

District attorneys in Tarrant and Collin counties said Jeffery Lemor Wheat, 51, pleaded guilty Tuesday to four North Texas sexual assaults that occurred between 2003 and 2011 in Tarrant, Collin, Denton and Dallas counties. Wheat was sentenced to life in prison for the Tarrant and Collin cases, and he was sentenced to 30 years for the Dallas County sexual assault.

Investigators said DNA evidence found during the investigation into a 2003 sexual abuse case in Arlington was resubmitted in 2018 and found to be a match for attacks researched in Shady Shores, Coppell and PlanoThese three attacks are believed to have taken place in 2010-2011 and all victims were former members of the same student association.

Investigators identified Wheat as a suspect in the attacks and located and arrested him in 2021 in Crawford County, Arkansas. The district attorney's office said subsequent DNA testing after his arrest confirmed DNA matches to the Arlington case and the three other cases.

“We are extremely grateful for the hard work of all the agencies who worked together to obtain justice for these women,” Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Stephanie Simpson said in a statement.

Officials said that when DNA from the Arlington case was first tested 15 years earlier, limitations in technology and testing failed to produce a match. The DNA test used in 2018 is called Forensic Genetic Genealogy, or FGG, and is the same test used to Glen McCurleyThe man who murdered 17-year-old Carla Walker in 1974 was tried in 2020, nearly 50 years after her abduction and murder.

In a probable cause affidavit obtained by NBC 5 in 2021, detectives said genealogical research, online searches, social media investigations and interviews led them to conclude that Wheat was a suspect in the attacks.

On November 12, 2020, detectives spoke with Wheat's ex-wife, who confirmed that he was the father of her child. Wheat's ex was shown a video recorded outside a gas station in 2011 that showed a man using a pay phone to call one of the attack victims and apologize. Wheat's ex-wife said she was certain the man in the video was her ex-husband after recognizing “the way he walked, his shoulders, his height, that he was wearing glasses.”

A DNA sample was taken from Wheat's child and sent to a DNA lab, which stated that the suspect's DNA sample at the crime scene “could not be ruled out as a possible biological father” of the child.

In the affidavit, police said Wheat's ex-wife believed he worked in customer service for Brinks Security, the same security firm the victim used in the 2003 attack. Wheat's ex-wife said she believed he worked for Fiserv, a financial services company, in 2011. Detectives said the victims in the 2010-2011 attacks all had ties to a fraternity that used Flagship Merchant Services, a credit card company controlled by First Data Independent Sales, a company later acquired by Fiserv.

The district attorney's offices in Tarrant and Collin counties thanked investigators for not giving up on the case and for the courage of survivors who gave victim impact statements at Tuesday's sentencing.

Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis said Three of the women testified at Tuesday's sentencing, confronting Wheat and describing the trauma they had endured.

“This maximum sentence would not have been possible without the courage of these four survivors, as well as the extraordinary cooperation and coordination of the Plano, Coppell, Corinth and Arlington police departments, and the Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant County district attorneys' offices,” Willis said.