A Waupaca County jury found a 50-year-old man guilty of sexual assault and it’s the first conviction in a case that’s connected to the backlog of untested rape kits.
Prosecutors filed charges against Leroy Whittenberger of Marion in April of last year after they say his DNA was a match to a kit from a 2012 investigation. They say Whittenberger raped a 17-year-old girl at an apartment in New London. Jurors convicted him of three counts of second-degree sexual assault. He could face up to 25 years in prison for each charge.
It’s Whittenberger’s fourth conviction for sexual assault. The other cases were in Marathon and Lincoln counties. The state justice department started working to clear the backlog of untested kits several years ago.
