Forty-three years after raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in 1981, convicted sex offender Marion Edward Pearson told a Montgomery County judge and his two victims that he was pleading guilty “because I am, in fact, guilty.”
Pearson, now 67, pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of second-degree rape and one count of second-degree sex assault for the attacks that happened in 1981 in Silver Spring.
On April 20, 1981, a woman was assaulted and raped near the 1800 block of University Boulevard West. DNA evidence was collected at the scene.
Almost two months later, on June 13,1981, a second woman was attacked and sexually assaulted in the area of Connecticut Avenue near Denfield Road.
In proffering details which would have been offered in trial, prosecutors said in both cases the women were grabbed from behind, dragged into wooded areas, had their eyes and mouths bound with white tape and told they were going to be held for ransom.
The cold case was revived in March 2022, when Montgomery County police detectives and forensic specialists identified an open rape case from April 1981 and submitted evidence collected from the rape to the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, for additional testing. A search of the FBI’s Natonal DNA Index System, or NDIS, identified a match, connecting the DNA to Pearson.
Pearson had been released from a North Carolina prison in 2020, after serving 22 years for a series of rapes in that state.
Friday morning in the Rockville courtroom, one victim was supported by friends and the other victim watched on Zoom as Circuit Court Judge Rachel McGuckian discussed the proposed plea agreement with assistant state’s attorneys Mary Herdman and Thea Zumwalt, plus public defender Samantha Sandler.
Under the agreement, Pearson pleaded guilty to the one count of the second-degree rape for the April attack and pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault for the June attack. While Pearson acknowledged brutally attacking both women, only DNA from the first crime scene was recovered.
In the proposed plea agreement Pearson faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, but he will serve no more than 17 years behind bars after McGuckian sentences him on Dec. 19. Pearson is currently being held in the Montgomery County Jail.
Editor’s note: Corrects prosecutors’ names.
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