man enters a guilty plea in a cold case rape in fayette county

​Today, Joe Louis Arnold, a 46 year old man from McDonough, entered a guilty plea to one count of Rape and one count of False Imprisonment. He was sentenced to 30 years to serve in the Georgia Department of Corrections. District Attorney Broder handled the case and presented the plea to the Honorable Rhonda Kreuziger, who accepted it. The victim and her family were present at the plea and addressed the Court in a victim impact statement.
 
Arnold pled guilty to entering the home of the victim on March 24, 1998, beating her with a baseball bat, and raping her in her kitchen. The case went unsolved until November 18, 2020 when the defendant was arrested. The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office in 2020 requested that the DNA from the rape kit undergo familial DNA analysis. After that analysis, the defendant’s profile emerged as a match to the profile from the rape kit. A confirmation test was performed at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the defendant’s DNA was indeed a match to the DNA in the rape kit. After the confirmation, the defendant was arrested.
 
District Attorney Broder said of the plea: “this was truly a team effort between my office and the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office. I cannot say thank you enough to the Sheriff’s Office and the work they did on this case. I am so proud of the victim and the strength she displayed throughout this case. She is a remarkable person, and I am honored to know her. This plea is a testament to tenacity and a refusal to give up on the part of all involved.”