A man already in custody in one sexual assault case that was part of a string of four attacks on women in 2010 and 2011 now faces a charge in another one of the assaults.
Coppell police said Monday that they obtained an arrest warrant last week for 48-year-old Jeffery Lemor Wheat.
Wheat was booked into the Collin County jail Jan. 15 after his arrest several days earlier in Arkansas in connection with a 2011 Plano case.
Police have said they believe the same man attacked four women — all alumnae of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority who were in their 50s or 60s — and authorities now say Wheat’s DNA links him to those cases.
On Nov. 11, 2010, the attacker tried to sexually assault a woman in Plano. On April 2, 2011, he sexually assaulted a woman in Plano. On Sept. 15, 2011, he sexually assaulted a woman in Coppell. And on Oct. 14, 2011, he sexually assaulted a woman in Shady Shores.
DNA evidence conclusively connected the three 2011 attacks, police have said, but no DNA was collected in the first case because it was an attempted rape.
The victims did not know one another, but police said their attacker made clear that he knew information about them during the assaults.
Several days after the 2011 Plano assault, the attacker called the victim from a pay phone at a convenience store in Mesquite and police obtained surveillance footage of the man who made the call.
Police spoke to Wheat’s ex-wife last year after their investigation led them to Wheat, and she said that he was the man in the footage because she recognized “the walk, his shoulders, his height and that he had glasses,” KXAS-TV (NBC5) reported.
Authorities also said in an affidavit that the DNA from the 2011 assaults matched DNA evidence from a 2003 Arlington sexual assault case.
Wheat remained in jail Monday, with total bail of $1 million. He did not have an attorney listed in court records.
