A man was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday after pleading guilty to four sexual assaults he committed during home invasions in North Texas.
Jeffery Lemor Wheat appeared in a Collin County courtroom on February 27 and pled guilty to raping four women in Plano, Corinth, Coppell, and Arlington between 2003 and 2011. The judge gave the 51-year-old 30 years for the assault in Dallas County, 20 years for the one in Denton County, and two life sentences for the remaining assaults in Tarrant and Collin Counties, reported NBC 5 DFW.
All four victims were alumni members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority and between the ages of 50 and 60 at the time. Wheat worked for a credit card processing company used by the organization, per CBS News Texas.
The daughter of one of the women, who gave a victim impact statement before the court prior to sentencing, spoke with CBS.
“Each woman’s pain was felt, and it had to be expressed,” she said, according to the news outlet. “So it was very hard but yet easy to speak on each woman’s behalf. And it was really empowering. It was very important to do that and to make sure justice was served.”
Wheat was arrested by Arkansas police in 2021 for the 2003 assault in Arlington after forensic genealogy identified him as the likely perpetrator. DNA evidence later linked him to the other cold cases, along with video surveillance footage of him calling one of the victims from a pay phone in 2011 to apologize for raping her.
“We are exceptionally grateful for the hard work of all the agencies that came together to secure justice for these women,” said Assistant Tarrant County District Attorney Stephanie Simpson in a statement, according to NBC 5.
Forensic genealogy has helped solve cold cases across the country, including a sexual assault in Dallas in 1985, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
Carrie Krejci tried to bring her rapist to justice for decades, and upon hearing about the new technology in 2020, she contacted Dallas County prosecutor Leighton D’Antoni. In September 2021, David Thomas Hawkins, a 75-year-old former dentist from Johnson County, was identified as Krejci’s rapist and sentenced to serve four life sentences in prison after being connected to several other assaults between 1982 and 1985.
Rape and fondling are the most common sex crimes committed in Dallas, with 31 and 29 reported this year, respectively, as of February 27, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard. Last year, 356 rapes and 254 fondling offenses were clocked. The vast majority of victims of sex crimes in Dallas were black and Hispanic women and girls, with the median age of rape victims being 16.
The Dallas Police Department has been laboring under a significant staffing shortage, with only around 3,000 officers in the field. This year, DPD will have a budget of $654 million, with City leaders opting to spend far less taxpayer money for police operations than their counterparts in other high-crime cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. It appears unlikely that DPD will reach the recommended headcount of 4,000 officers this year, as previously indicated in a City report determining policing needs by population size.
Comparative studies between Downtown Dallas and Fort Worth’s city center show that significantly more crime occurs in the former. In January, the Metroplex Civic & Business Association found that roughly 24 times more auto thefts and six times more assaults occurred in Downtown Dallas, alongside dozens more reports of criminal property damage. A dedicated police unit and private security officers patrol Fort Worth’s city center.