Michael Sharpe, 71, was sentenced to 40 to 72 years in prison on kidnapping charges. He is accused of a series of 1984 home invasion attacks on four women. The crimes were solved in 2020 with the help of a genealogy database and a DNA sample. Sharpe apologized to the women during the hearing, after saying he has memory problems (CBS News, 2023).
He was very sorry for not remembering anything that happen in the past. He apologizes to four ladies who were sexually attacked by the same man in their houses. All four testified about being attacked in the middle of the night in their bedrooms and suffering lifelong trauma. He stated to the victims that no one should ever break into their homes and violate them like that.
After a five-day trial in November of last year, a state jury in Hartford unanimously returned a guilty judgment on all eight abduction charges against Sharpe after deliberating for less than an hour. Because there was a five-year statute of limitations at the time, he could not be prosecuted for sexual assault. There is no time restriction for kidnapping accusations.
Police say they were led to Sharpe in 2020 because his relatives gave DNA samples to a genealogy website. The case went cold when police were unable to identify a suspect. DNA samples taken from the trash outside Sharpe’s home matched the DNA found at crime scenes. Sharpe was once the chief executive officer of a group that ran a tuition-free charter school.