Shawana Hall ran across two lanes of the empty highway and through the rain-soaked grass in the median.

She ran across two more lanes and toward a fence. Fleeing through the western part of Kalamazoo, she spotted the police car, a laptop screen illuminating the vehicle, so she kept going. Over the fence, through a parking lot. She sprinted up to the patrol car, beat on the window and said she’d been raped.

The man had a knife and struck her in the face, she told the officer. She met her attacker that night, but didn’t know his name.

The officer gave Shawana a number to call if she wanted police to pursue the case and then took her to a nurse trained in collecting information and evidence, including swabs and samples, they hoped might identify her rapist. The process took hours. She left alone and in different clothes when the exam was over, having never spoken with police again.

Eight months later, in December 2008, DNA evidence identified a suspect: Calvin Kelly, a Memphis man who spent decades as a truck driver and traveled all over the country.

Shawana wasn’t the first woman whose rape led police to Kelly. Marie, a St. Louis woman, said he raped her in the back of his truck the year before. And Shawana wasn’t the last. A woman in Virginia the following year told police she was raped, the investigation once again leading police to Kelly. Three women in three states in three consecutive years.

Kelly maintains his innocence. He never raped anyone, he’s said, and these women lied to settle a grudge.

Yet a look at these women reveals something else. Kelly’s victims were poor, black and vulnerable, characteristics that make them more likely to be raped and less likely to be believed. Almost all the investigations ended without charges, the most common outcome when a rape is reported. Indeed, less than one percent of rapes end with a rapist in jail.

"These are challenging, but also simple cases," said Angela Povilaitis, an experienced sex crimes prosecutor who at the same time led the prosecutions of Kelly and disgraced former doctor Larry Nassar.

"It really comes down to do you believe his version or do you believe the victim’s version."

Kelly’s case went to trial in September 2017. After six days of testimony – including from Shawana and Marie and the woman from Virginia – and a day of deliberation, Povilaitis found herself waiting for the verdict as confident as she’d ever been as prosecutor. The jury, however, found Kelly not guilty.

But that isn’t the whole story. And that isn’t the end of the story.

Falsely accused or serial rapist?
What Povilaitis knew and couldn’t tell the Kalamazoo County jury was that it wasn’t just three women in three states in three years.

It was 11 women in four states over the course of three decades who told police that they’d been raped with the ensuing investigations leading to Kelly.

So Kelly is either a man who has repeatedly been falsely accused, or Kelly is a serial rapist.

The first known rape report police connected to Kelly is from Memphis in 1985, when a small, red sports car pulled up alongside a woman walking down the street.

The driver offered a ride, and she accepted. Once inside the car, he hit her in the chest and pulled out a gun. He drove her to a lot behind a school and raped her twice. The woman picked Kelly out of a photo lineup, but by the time police went for their warrant, Kelly had moved to St. Louis and an extradition effort failed.

Two years later, in May 1987, a woman told St. Louis police that a man raped her in her home. DNA evidence eventually linked the case to Kelly, but not until 2015.

In November 1987, a woman told police she was standing near an intersection in the rain when a man drove up and asked if she wanted a ride. She said yes, and he drove her to an alley, pulled out a knife and raped her.

He told police they had sex in his car and she wanted money afterward, adding that she had a knife and tried to cut him. At the police station, she identified Kelly as her rapist.

Prosecutors didn’t charge Kelly.

In 1989, two women told St. Louis police they were raped in Sherman Park. Police made the connection between the two cases and tracked down Kelly. He told police the women were prostitutes and he hadn’t paid them.

Prosecutors didn’t charge Kelly in either case.

Months later, in August 1990, a woman told police that she’d invited Kelly, whom she knew, into her home. He later choked her until she passed out and then raped her on the floor.

Kelly told police the sex was consensual. He fell asleep afterward, and when he woke up, he thought the woman had stolen from him.

"I got so mad, I hit her one time, and that’s what she got mad about," Kelly told police during an interview in the St. Louis police sex crimes unit. "She knew I had been down here for rape before, and she was mad 'cause I hit her. That’s why she called the police and said I raped her. There was no rape."

For the fourth time since November 1987, St. Louis prosecutors didn’t charge Kelly.

The pattern in St. Louis – reported rape, denial and no charges – would play out again.

A fight in the dark
Seventeen years later, in March 2007, Marie stood in the rain on a St. Louis street. She’d missed her bus and was facing a 45-minute wait for the next one when she turned to see Kelly getting out of a tractor trailer parked at a gas station.

He’d called out to her, and she walked over.

She was 36 and had been fighting drug addiction for 19 years. She’d been clean for four months but recently relapsed. She was feeling down and was headed to see a friend.

Marie didn’t know Kelly, but he offered a ride.

He assured her he’d take her to her friend’s house but had to drop off the trailer first. Marie expected the detour to be quick.

As he drove, he asked if something was wrong, and they talked about her relapse.

A short while later, he pulled into a lot, within sight of a St. Louis police station, and got out of the cab.

When Kelly got back in, he lunged at Marie.

She struggled to fight him off in the darkness. She kicked him. She bit him. She tried everything she could. Then, as he put pressure on her throat and she struggled to breathe, she stopped fighting. Maybe, she thought, if she stopped she’d live through the night.

She says he raped her on the bed in the back of the cab.

Marie had a knife with her that night, tucked into in her sock. She reached down and searched for the handle as he raped her. But he noticed and got there first.

He continued raping her, telling her how much he liked it and that he could continue all night. Marie isn’t sure how long this went on, but when he was done, he became a different person. The violent man was gone; he was back to the man who offered her a ride and refuge from the rain.

As he drove her to her friend’s house, Kelly said he wanted to date her and wondered what they’d tell their friends about how they met. Marie forced herself to smile because she wanted to get out alive.

When he pulled up to her friend’s house, he gave her back the knife and handed her a piece of paper with his phone number.

After he drove off, Marie called police and told them what happened.

"He was telling me that he drives from state to state and that he pick girls that get high because he knows that the police won’t believe them," Marie said. "And all he’s got to do is say 'They mad because I didn’t pay them what they wanted. I promised to pay them, and I didn't. I just got what I wanted, and I didn’t have to pay them.'

"And he said they would believe him over me. He said he had done it before. He got away with it before."

As she began to see that police didn’t believe her – they pointed out that she used drugs and questioned why a rapist would give his phone number – Marie told them the man forced her into the truck with a knife of his own.

"I wanted them to take me serious," she said. "I wanted them to act on what just happened to me. And it’s like, as long as they stood there and debated whether I was telling the truth or not, they was letting him get away."

She also told them that he forced her to smoke crack, knowing police would find out that she’d recently used and that would be yet another reason to doubt her. She admitted these lies to police about two weeks after the initial report.

After she reported her rape, police took Marie to the hospital where a nurse collected evidence for the rape kit that would be processed and later be entered into a database accessible by law enforcement all over the country.

"I left the hospital and just said forget it. I just felt like nothing was going to come of it," Marie said. She believed police saw her as a drug addict who got into a truck with a stranger and maybe deserved what happened.

"That’s how they make you feel."

In March 2007, for the fifth time since 1987, St. Louis prosecutors decided not to charge Kelly.

'I ran from here'
About a year later, in April 2008, Shawana was celebrating her 31st birthday. She had a few drinks with her aunt and sister, then walked to a friend’s house in Kalamazoo, had a few more drinks and got high.

Shawana had been around drugs, in one way or another, most of her adult life, but she didn’t try crack until 2007.

Shawana had talked with her younger sister Talaya about rehab and was thinking about going. But the night of her birthday she was still using.

As Shawana and her friend walked to a nearby liquor store, a light-colored four-door car pulled up and the driver struck up a conversation.

He was with someone both Shawana and her friend knew. When he asked if he could go back and party with them, they said yes.

Back at the house, Kelly asked Shawana if he could buy her a birthday drink but said they’d have to swing by his hotel first so he could grab his wallet. She said yes, expecting a quick trip before returning to the house.

They drove down Frank Street to Westnedge Avenue and then about 15 minutes later they were on U.S. 131, on the western edge of Kalamazoo driving through the rain and heading toward the Red Roof Inn.

The car slowed and pulled over to the side of the highway. He got out but didn’t say why. Shawana thought something was wrong with the car, but then he came back with a knife and told her to get in the back. Frightened, she did what he said.

She cried as he raped her and feared he might kill her, she later testified.

She asked him to stop, but he didn’t. He’d rape her twice more, she said, driving the car further along the highway between each rape. Finally, he opened the door and told her to get out.

He drove off and she started running, in the dark and through the rain. Across the highway and over the fence and up to the police car.

Shawana, scared and crying, wanted police to find her rapist. She also worried what might happen once the officer discovered there was a misdemeanor warrant for her arrest.

"After what I just went through, I didn’t want to go to jail," she said. So she gave the officer a false name. That wouldn’t matter, however, because by the time a detective was assigned to the case, eight months later, Shawana was gone.

"After the incident happened, I ran from here," she said. "I thought he still lived here. I had no idea he was not from here. I didn’t want to be nowhere near him, nowhere around where he could hurt me again."

'Let me start here'
In 2012, Special Agent Karen Fairley started her first case for the Michigan Attorney General’s Office looking for the wrong person.

Continued at link.

https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2019/01/08/calvin-kelly-rape-investigations-memphis-kalamazoo-st-louis/2462538002/