396 Years to Life for Roaming Rapist

District Attorney Jan Scully announced that the Honorable Steve White sentenced 41-year old Dereck Jermaine Sanders to 396 years to life in prison.

On October 15, 2014, a jury convicted Sanders on all 28 counts of sexual assault and kidnapping charges. Coined the “Roaming Rapist,” Sanders committed a series of 10 violent sexual assaults in the city and county of Sacramento between 1998 and 2003.

These cases were all linked through DNA matches to the same unknown assailant. In 2012, the District Attorney’s Crime Lab requested the California Department of Justice perform a familial DNA search. The search returned a DNA match to DNA already in the database from a close relative of the unknown perpetrator.

Using that relative as a lead, further investigation and subsequent DNA analysis identified Sanders as the Roaming Rapist.