LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — A Gwinnett County judge ruled there is enough evidence to move forward against a man accused of raping three women in their apartments in 1986 and 1987.
Advanced DNA tested helped link the suspect to the decades-old cases, according to testimony.
Channel 2 Action News reported in March that Lawrenceville police and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested 60-year-old Glenn Daniel Plybon in connection with attacks in Lilburn and Lawrenceville. He faced a preliminary hearing for three rape cases on Thursday.
A GBI agent testified that police say Plybon broke into the women’s apartments while they slept, using weapons to control them. In one case, police say a victim woke to find a man in her bed holding a knife while her young daughter slept in the next room.
An anonymous tip actually named Plybon back in 1986, according to the GBI. Investigators showed victims a photo lineup but none identified him, and the lead went cold.
“They dropped it,” said Special Agent David Jones with the GBI’s Cold Case Unit. “They said, ‘We don’t think we could develop him as a suspect,’ and they moved on.”
The evidence collected from the victims sat for decades until the state crime lab notified agencies it could run advanced DNA testing. GBI agents and Lawrenceville police worked with the company Othram to build a genetic family tree from the samples and landed on Plybon a second time.
Agents tracked Plybon to a home in Habersham County where he lives with his wife, about 90 miles from where the attacks happened. They pulled his trash in January and matched DNA from tobacco pouches to all three attacks, according to testimony. The same DNA also linked to a fourth case, but that victim has since died.
Jones testified the odds of the DNA matching someone other than Plybon were one in 70 octillion.
“We don’t believe that he just stopped,” Jones said. “We don’t believe that, but we just can’t prove it either.”
The judge found probable cause on all three warrants and sent the case to Superior Court.
Jones said one victim told him the trauma forced her to leave Georgia entirely because she could not stop seeing her attacker in the face of every stranger.
The investigation remains active. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Lawrenceville Police Department.
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