(KRON) -- “I just wish I could have told her that we got him,” said Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, announcing on Tuesday that an Indiana man admitted to raping a 61-year-old San Jose woman in 2008. The victim died of natural causes in 2011.
James Whisenand, now 45 years old, will serve 25 years in state prison under the conditions of his guilty plea, according to the DA’s office.
Eighteen years ago, on Jan. 6, 2008, Whisenand put on a ski mask and broke into the senior living facility on Saint Elizabeth Drive. He entered the victim’s first-floor apartment, punched her in the face, choked her and then sexually assaulted her several times, prosecutors said.
The rapist was not identified by detectives at the time. Records would later reveal that Whisenand lived two blocks away from the senior living facility with his former wife.
James Whisenand (Photo: Clay County Sheriff's Office)
Whisenand moved more than 2,000 miles away to the Midwest, where, in 2023, he was convicted of misdemeanor sexual battery. The DA’s Crime Laboratory received a notification in 2024 that DNA entered into the CODIS database matched DNA recovered from the San Jose crime scene.
“In September 2024, Whisenand was arrested thanks to the assistance of Indiana State Police, the U.S. Marshals, the Clay County Sheriff, and Brazil, Indiana police,” the DA’s office wrote. “Authorities convinced him to come down to the local police department to fill out forms related to his sex registration. He was met by San Jose Police Department Special Victims Unit Sgt. Sean Pierce and Det. John Moutzouridis, the original detectives who investigated the assault in 2008.”
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Whisenand is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 22.
