Convicted rapist out of jail, again accused of rape

A convicted sex offender who once raped a victim an hour after being released from Montgomery County Jail because of red tape regarding an active arrest warrant has been indicted on new charges of rape at knifepoint and other violent crimes.

Michael Ray Cohen, 40, of Trotwood, has two new felony cases in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court. On Thursday, he was denied bond. One case involves rape, kidnapping and aggravated robbery in Dayton and the other includes kidnapping and abduction brought by Trotwood police.

Cohen, who has spent about half his life in prison for various crimes, was released in April 2014. Court officials said he was in Montgomery County Jail from Oct. 2 to 24, when he was taken to the Correctional Reception Center in London due to a parole violation.

Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Greg Flannagan said the Dayton case involved a July 1 incident in which Cohen is alleged to have forced a woman to have sex with him at knifepoint in the area of Laura and Theodore avenues near Riverside Drive.

The Trotwood charges stem from an Aug. 20 incident near Shiloh Springs and Olive roads in which Cohen is alleged to have ordered another woman at knifepoint into the back of his vehicle and held her arms while he drove to another location, threatened her and tried to take her pants off, but could not, Flannagan said.

None of the alleged victims in the 2014 cases are the same as in Cohen’s 2004 domestic violence conviction or 2005 conviction for rape, domestic violence and failure to comply with the order or signal of police officer.

Court documents show Cohen pleaded no contest rather than go to trial in the 2005 rape case “so he could serve his time and be out of prison in time to play a role in his child’s life.”

Rather than the nine years and five months Cohen was ordered to spend in prison from cases in Montgomery and Warren counties, he was released in April 2014 after about 8½ years.

A story published in the newspaper in 2005 said Cohen was freed from jail because a warrant to hold him became clogged in a bureaucratic pipeline.

Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office employees and court officials differed on why it happened, but a sheriff’s official said they didn’t receive a warrant until 11:13 a.m. March 28, 2005, which was about seven hours after Cohen was released from jail at 4 a.m.

The archive story said that the warrant was issued by a Common Pleas judge three days before Cohen was freed. The warrant was not delivered that Friday — the clerks got it from the court at 3:09 p.m. — because the clerk’s office had made its daily 11 a.m. run to the jail, Jim Knight, chief deputy of the legal department of the Clerk of Courts, said at the time.

Knight said he had been told that the sheriff’s office requested the clerk’s office deliver warrants once a day. The belated delivery was the warrant’s second trip to the jail. Jailers said they rejected the first one because it incorrectly described Cohen.

Dayton police said Cohen was accused of raping a 34-year-old woman in her home within an hour of his release from jail. Dayton police in April 2005 said Cohen, who stand 6 feet and weighs 275 pounds, had had martial arts training and was considered “armed and dangerous” before the U.S. Marshals captured him.

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