Convicted serial rapist arraigned on Akron rape

Man serving 113-year sentence for 15 rapes in Cuyahoga County.

A serial rapist AKRON — already sentenced to more than a century in prison for sexual assaults in Cuyahoga County was arraigned Friday for a 2003 rape in Akron that he was tied to through DNA.

Nathan Ford, 50, pleaded not guilty to one count of rape during a video arraignment from the Summit County Jail.

Summit County Common Pleas Magistrate Dawn Humphrys set Ford’s bond at $50,000.

Ford told Humphrys that he is indigent and will need to have an attorney appointed. She said Judge Alison McCarty, who has been appointed to his case, will appoint him an attorney when he next appears in court on Oct. 18.

Ford was convicted of numerous criminal charges stemming from rapes in the Cleveland area and is serving 113 years in prison.

In January 2016, Akron police matched Ford’s DNA to DNA in a rape kit from an assault on Oct. 18, 2003. At the time, Ford was being prosecuted in Cuyahoga County. When those cases were concluded, Akron police filed charges for the 2003 incident, prosecutors said.

In the Akron incident, a 22-year-old woman told police a man approached her in the 800 block of East Exchange Street and said he had something to show her at the rear of the house. She said he forced her to the ground, pulled her shirt over her face and raped her. She said he used a condom, according to the incident report.

After the man fled, the woman flagged down an Akron police cruiser, prosecutors say.

Ford was tied to the Akron rape through testing done as part of Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s effort to test rape kits for matches.

He is the second person in Summit County prosecuted for a DNA match through the state testing program. Efrem Johnson was sentenced to 28 years in prison last November after being convicted of a 2000 rape that he was tied to through a hit on his DNA. Johnson already was serving a life sentence for a 2010 murder.

Ford was convicted in Cuyahoga County on multiple charges of rape, kidnapping, gross sexual imposition, felonious assault, aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary. His sentence runs through March 2158 and he will first be eligible for parole in February 2140, according to the state prison website.

Ford, a former Lake County probation officer, claimed he had no memory of the 15 rapes he was tied to through DNA in Cuyahoga County. Prosecutors said he grabbed the victims off of the street and threatened them with a gun or choked them as he raped them, according to a Cleveland Plain Dealer story.

Ford’s attorney argued he suffered from a type of dementia that damaged parts of his brain and hampered his sexual impulses. Prosecutors, however, countered that Ford’s behavior was calculated, with him at times wearing gloves or forcing his victims to wash to try to remove evidence, according to the Plain Dealer story.

“I will kill you,” Ford told one victim, according to her report. “I’ve killed people before.”