Preble County serial rapist: Man who attacked 16 women in Ohio, Indiana eligible for parole

Feb. 21—A man serving up to a 135-year prison sentence for a notorious serial rape case in Preble County is eligible for parole this spring.

Steven E. Barker, 61, was convicted in 1995 of raping 12 women in Ohio and Indiana and attempting to rape four more women. He has been incarcerated since May 1995 and is housed in the Marion Correctional Institution, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction website.

The Ohio Parole Board scheduled hearings this week to determine whether to grant him parole. It is his third time before the parole board, which denied his parole and continued it in 2004 and 2014.

Barker was living in the Preble County village of New Paris when he was arrested in 1993 in the sexual assaults in east-central Indiana and west-central Ohio beginning in January 1991. He preyed on older women — the youngest 40 and the oldest past 80 — who lived alone, the Palatium-Item reported.

He was convicted of rape, kidnapping, felony penetration, aggravated burglary, theft and escape.

DNA evidence linked him to several rape victims. A witness picked him out of a lineup in another and an FBI crime lab was able to confirm an exact match to black electrical tape used in several rapes that he borrowed from a neighbor, police said, the Pal-Item reported.

Barker terrorized the community all over again when he escaped from the old Preble County Jail along with another inmate in August of 1994. They used hacksaws to cut the bars to their fourth-floor window and bed sheets and rope to lower themselves to the ground, the newspaper report.

After 23 days as a fugitive, the FBI arrested him in Houston, Texas, at a construction site where he was working. Once he returned, the new Preble County Jail was ready for him, the Pal-Item reported Sept. 24, 1994.

It's not clear when the board will reach a decision.

However, even if he is granted parole, he still has a 50-year sentence to serve in Indiana.