Crime & Public Safety
Murderer. Parolee. Now, a Cobb County rapist.
Mugshot of Kenneth Charles Lewis courtesy of the Cobb County Sheriff's Office.
After spending 24 years in prison for killing someone with a machete, it took Kenneth Charles Lewis only a couple years out on parole to rape a 14-year-old Acworth girl.
A Cobb County judge sentenced Lewis, 55, to three life sentences plus 20 years Wednesday.
A jury convicted Lewis of rape, two counts of aggravated sodomy and child molestation, according to the Cobb district attorney's office.
Lewis started his murder stint in January 1984 for the Cherokee County crime.
He was paroled in October 2008. The sexual assault began in 2011 and went on until 2013.
The rape victim testified at trial this week that Lewis said he'd "chopped someone’s head off," which the girl took as a threat, the DA's office said. In 1983, Lewis was charged with murder and armed robbery after the body of a 23-year-old Cobb man was found cut up by a machete in a wooded area just north of the county line, according to news reports at the time.
MORE: Marietta man given two life sentences for molesting girls, 6 and 8
Acworth police found out about the rape when the teen told her mother in 2014.
Lewis testified for more than an hour Wednesday, insisting the girl was lying.
But prosecutor Hannah Palmquist had something to tell jurors about that her closing argument: "The defendant got on that stand and tried to manipulate you the same way that he manipulated his victim. He got up there and charmed you. He got you to like him and to trust him. He got you to drop your guard. That is a predator. That is a wolf in sheep’s clothing."
The trial began Monday.
"In a sense you committed murder one more time because you destroyed the life of a child. These are wounds that this young girl will bear for life,” Cobb Superior Court Judge Stephen Schuster told Lewis. “The best I can do for this girl is to make sure that the State of Georgia does not give you another chance. I hope the Department of Corrections reads my sentence that you are not to spend one day of the rest of your natural life outside of custody."
About the Author
Ben Brasch is the reporter tasked with keeping Fulton County government accountable. The Florida native moved to Atlanta for a job with The AJC. If there's something important to you going on in Fulton, he wants to know about it. Help him better metro Atlanta by dropping a line, anonymously or otherwise.
