Shortly before midnight on Dec. 30, 1997, George Eugene Cross
knocked on the door of an Anaheim apartment, waking a 17-year-old girl sleeping inside. When she opened the door, Cross told the girl her mother owed him money. When she informed Cross her mother was not home, he
asked to wait inside.
He sat on the couch and watched television for about 10 minutes before asking the teen for a massage. She refused. He then asked to see her manicure. When she extended her arm, he grabbed her and forcibly raped her.
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The girl called the cops, and DNA evidence was collected as she was examined. But the case went cold.
In 2003, Cross was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a series of rapes in Sacramento County. His DNA was also entered in the crime database, and in 2004, Orange County authorities got a hit for the 1997 rape in Anaheim.
A jury on Feb. 16 found Cross guilty of rape, with a sentencing enhancement for residential burglary. On Thursday, a judge in Santa Ana sentenced the 42-year-old to 25 years to life in state
prison. His term will run concurrently with his sentence for the Sacto County crimes.
This week's ugly-police-mug model was on probation for a 1995 sexual battery in Los Angeles County when he raped the girl in Anaheim.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.