Why it took Durham police years to catch a serial rapist with charges dating back decades

Search warrants show DNA evidence linked 65-year-old Dennis Speed, years ago, to rapes in Durham. Yet, he was not taken into custody until October of this year, after he was being investigated in relation to the body of a woman found in a trash can.

Speed now faces charges for rape in Durham cases from 2009, 2010, 2015 and 2020.

WRAL first reported on Dennis Speed in November, when the warrants were made public, linking him to four rapes over eleven years.

Search warrants state that it took years for investigators to send off the rape kits for testing at the state lab. WRAL has reported extensively on the backlog in testing.

The warrants explain that the Durham Police Department got DNA lab results back, implicating Speed, in 2019. Lt. Stephen Vaughan with DPD told WRAL he thought it was actually 2022. Either way, Speed was not arrested until October of this year.

Vaughan said the arrest did not happen earlier because officers had a hard time tracking down the victims. Vaughan said Speed often preyed on women who were vulnerable, often experiencing homelessness.

"Even if the victims wouldn't cooperate or you couldn't find them," WRAL Investigative Reporter Sarah Krueger asked him in a sit-down interview, "why was that DNA evidence not enough?"

"In the court proceedings," Vaughan explained, "if I can't produce that person that has made the accusation, minus them being deceased, it's hard to move forward with that case...I have to have all the pieces there. And yes, it is frustrating."

Vaughan said Speed is now being investigated in relation to the body of Laresa Garcia, found in October in a Durham trash can.

He faces a felony charge in that case for secretly disposing of a body. Police told WRAL her cause of death has not been determined, but they are investigating it as "suspicious."

After linking him to that, Vaughan said, investigators renewed their efforts to find the rape victims, and succeeded in making contact with one. That's why prosecution is now moving forward.

Yet court records show police came face-to-face with Speed in 2020, when he was accused of raping a woman at The Carolina Duke Inn.

The warrant states that Speed and the victim were still at the hotel when officers arrived.

"Why was he not arrested at that point?" Krueger asked Vaughan.

"That's part of an investigation I'm not going to go into," he replied.

"Do you think that was the right choice?" Krueger responded.

"Maybe not. But then again, I don't all the facts of being there that day," Vaughan said.

WRAL searched Speed's criminal record at the Durham and Granville County Courthouses, and found additional charges for rape in 1989, 2001 and 2016.

In the 2016 case, Granville deputies wrote they found the victim "bound by a pair of socks on the front seat of the truck with no clothing on...from the waist down."

Vaughan believes there are more women who are victims. He encourages them to come forward.

"We will never stop on any of these cases."

The Durham Police Department was the lead investigating agency the two rapes reported in the city, and the Durham County Sheriff's Office had jurisdiction over the other two, which were alleged to have occurred in the County. WRAL asked the sheriff's office multiple times for an interview for this story.

Speed has a court date scheduled for Dec. 5.