Man Convicted Of Violent Rapes Of Woman, 14-Year-Old Girl; Faces 45 Years To Life In Prison

A 59-year-old California man has been convicted by a Sacramento County jury of two rapes, including one involving an underage victim, due to DNA evidence, prosecutors said.

Hawthorne McGee faces 45 years to life behind bars after being convicted Thursday on two counts of rape and one count of oral copulation by force, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.

Prosecutors said that the first rape happened in Sacramento County in June 2006, when the then-14-year-old victim saw her friend driving in a car with McGee. She joined her friend, and they later went back to McGee’s house.

McGee told the friend to leave the house before he "forcefully and brutally" raped the underage victim for around 1 hour in his living room.

As this was happening, McGee’s girlfriend was in the bedroom of the house. The girlfriend heard the victim crying and telling the suspect that she was only 14. At some point, the woman was able to drive the teenage girl away from McGee's house, prosecutors said.

The second count of rape stemmed from an incident in November 2009, when a woman was waiting at a light rail station and was approached by McGee.

McGee persuaded the second victim to go have pizza with him and asked her to go back to a motel with him. The victim told McGee multiple times that she did not want to have sex and only wanted to talk at the motel.

But once they arrived in the room, McGee hit the woman several times and strangled her as he sexually assaulted her.

The woman passed out and woke up several hours later with injuries all over her body.

In both cases, DNA evidence was collected during evidentiary examinations, and it matched that of McGee in the federal Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS, a database of DNA profiles known to law enforcement.

McGee was arrested by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office on Dec. 10, 2019, according to county jail records. He had pleaded not guilty to the three charges, Sacramento County court records show.

He is currently being held at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove, the Sacramento Bee reported.

McGee had prior convictions dating to at least 1994 for domestic violence, gun possession violations, driving while intoxicated and reckless driving.