On Tuesday, Sept. 8, the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office obtained arrest warrants against 45-year-old Jamal Toliaferro for charges that include rape and kidnapping with bodily injury
Credit: Sherry Boston DeKalb County District Attorney/Facebook
NEED TO KNOW
- The DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office obtained arrest warrants against 45-year-old Jamal Toliaferro for charges that include rape and kidnapping with bodily injury
- He is accused of three separate attacks on women that occurred in 2014, 2019 and 2024
- Toliaferro is also accused of fatally stabbing a 30-year-old man
Authorities in Georgia have accused a man of being the masked intruder who sexually assaulted two women and kidnapped another between 2014 and 2024.
On Tuesday, Sept. 8, the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office obtained arrest warrants against 45-year-old Jamal Toliaferro for charges that include rape, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, armed robbery and possession of a knife during the commission of a felony.
Toliaferro is accused of three separate attacks on women that occurred in 2014, 2019 and 2024.
The break in the case came after police arrested Toliaferro for the stabbing death of a 30-year-old man.
According to a DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office news release, the first known attack allegedly occurred on Christmas Eve in 2014.
In that case, a 54-year-old woman reported that she was leaving her home in the 3100 block of Evelyn Street in Tucker, Ga., when a masked intruder confronted her in the garage and then “bound her wrists, covered her mouth, and sexually assaulted her,” per the release.
After the assault, she was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital where she was given a sexual assault exam. A DNA profile was developed from the evidence collected and entered into the felon DNA databank CODIS, but a suspect was not identified, prosecutors said.
Five years later, on Jan. 30, 2019, a 35-year-old woman was attacked at an apartment complex in the 2100 block of Northlake Parkway in Tucker.
The woman, 35, told officers a masked man with a knife tied her up and sexually assaulted her.
“She bit her attacker’s hand, drawing blood,” the release states. “Crime scene investigators collected a blood sample from the scene.”
Although a DNA profile from the blood stain was obtained, the “offender remained unknown.”
However, in 2021, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) linked the 2019 and 2014 assaults to the same unidentified male.
According to prosecutors, the suspect struck again in 2024. This time, he allegedly kidnapped a 67-year-old woman and forced her into her vehicle as she was leaving work.
“The man bound her wrists, taped her mouth shut, and drove her around for hours while trying to use her bank cards to withdraw money from ATMs,” according to the release. “The man cut her and burned her with a lighter during the kidnapping.”
Authorities said he eventually let her go and she went to the DeKalb County Fire Station 22 located on Montreal Road for help.
Investigators found the suspect’s black drawstring bag in the car.
Prosecutors said the GBI developed a DNA profile from the bag and entered it into CODIS, but again there was no match at that time.
In September 2025, the GBI linked the 2024 kidnapping to the two prior sexual assaults and notified the District Attorney’s Office that the 2019 sample was “a good candidate” for Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG). The DA’s Office requested authorization from the U.S. Department of Justice for grant funding to complete the genetic genealogy testing.
“In January 2026, the Task Force’s private lab partner, Othram, developed a searchable SNP profile from the offender’s blood recovered in the 2019 sexual assault,” the release states.
Authorities cracked the case in July when Toliaferro became a suspect in the killing of 30-year-old Kenyon Jeffries who was found fatally stabbed in the 3100 block of Evelyn Street in Tucker.
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According to the release, investigators noticed a trail of blood leading from the crime scene to a vacant property across the street. After returning with a search warrant, investigators came across Toliaferro who was “recovering from wounds consistent with having been involved in an altercation with a knife.”
He was taken into custody and charged with malice murder, criminal trespass and obstruction of law enforcement officers “after additional evidence collected at the home connected him to the homicide.”
As part of the homicide investigation, police obtained a search warrant for Toliaferro’s DNA,” the release states. “DKPD notified the Cold Case Task Force after identifying physical similarities between Toliaferro and victim descriptions of the unidentified serial offender. They also identified similar fact patterns in the crimes such as the locations on and around Evelyn Street in the Northlake area, the use of a knife or cutting weapon, and that the victims were bound.”
Police said investigators obtained a search warrant for Toliaferro’s DNA and compared it to the 2019 rape case.
The cases matched.
Investigators then obtained an additional search warrant for a new DNA sample from Toliaferro.
“Through traditional STR DNA testing, the GBI confirmed that Toliaferro’s STR DNA profile matches the evidentiary DNA profile developed in all three previously unsolved cases,” according to the news release.
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