Marion Pearson, now living in North Carolina, pleaded guilty in October to second-degree rape and sex assault for the attacks of two victims in separate attacks in April and June 1981.
On Thursday, Dec. 19, authorities announced that Pearson was sentenced by a judge in Montgomery County to 40 years in prison suspending all but 17 years to serve and two years of supervised probation upon release.
The judge also ordered that Pearson register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
In March 2022, prosecutors say that detectives from the Montgomery County Police Cold Case Unit identified an open rape case from April 1981, and additional testing linked the crime to Pearson, who served 22 years behind bars in North Carolina for a series of rapes before his release in 2020.
Court documents state that in the first incident, Pearson approached his first victim in the 1800 block of University Boulevard in Wheaton when she was attacked from behind and forced deep into a nearby wooded area, stating that he was not going to hurt her, just hold her for ransom.