Rape victim gives infuriating account of investigation by Independence police

A crime lab linked one of the men charged with abducting and raping a sheriff’s deputy in Johnson County to a previously unsolved gang rape in Independence. The woman who reported the rape to Independence police is now speaking out against the investigation, which evidently went nowhere until the DNA match.

In an infuriating story published Thursday at Cosmopolitan‘s website, the victim, Taylor Hirth, discusses her belief that Independence police “diminish[ed] the severity of the attack based on my not being a virgin and being a sexual human.”

Hirth tells writer Andy Kopsa that she felt like she was the one being investigated when she read the police report and saw the evidence the police had collected. Police took photographs of condoms she kept in a box as well as some of her books, including a close-up of Kate Harding’s Asking for It, a book about rape culture. “It was like they were working for the defense,” Hirth tells Kopsa. One officer described Hirth as “nonchalant” after speaking with her at the hospital.

Hirth was gang-raped in the bedroom of her apartment sometime after 1 a.m. on February 9, 2016. The attack lasted two-and-half hours as Hirth’s then 2-year-old daughter lay at her side. Hirth says she was grabbed and punched when she tried to pick up her daughter and escape. When that failed, she “resigned herself to taking it,” as Kopsa writes. “She said she wanted to make them feel ‘this chick is OK, she isn’t going to call the cops.'”

Hirth was also mindful of evidence. At one point, she asked for a glass of water, creating a chance for an assailant to leave fingerprints in the kitchen.

Her identity partly concealed, Hirth wrote about the attack on Facebook, including the hashtags #CantShutMeUp and #ThisIsOurReality in her posts. She also talked to reporters. Mary Sanchez wrote a story in The Kansas City Star in late April which suggested that Hirth (identified as “Taylor”) and Independence police were not on the same page. Sanchez wrote that Hirth hoped to “draw attention to the case, possibly encouraging a tip.” Yet the police department declined to comment, missing an opportunity to provide details that might generate new leads.

The case was cold. Then, in early October, a Johnson County sheriff’s deputy was abducted on her way to work, sexually assaulted and left near I-470 and Woods Chapel Road in Jackson County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol’s crime lab matched semen collected from the attack on the sheriff’s deputy to a sample from obtained from Hirth’s rape kit. On the same day the crime lab notified Independence police of the match, two suspects were taken into custody in connection with the crimes against the sheriff’s deputy. William Luth, 24, of Blue Springs, and Brady Newman-Caddell, 21, of Independence, have pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated kidnapping, rape and aggravated sodomy in connection with the attack on the deputy.

Independence detectives interviewed Newman-Caddell while he was being held at the Johnson County detention center. On Dec. 23, the Jackson County prosecutor’s office charged Newman-Caddell with four counts of rape and endangering the welfare of a child in connection with the attack on Hirth.

According to a probable cause statement, Newman-Caddell admitted that he and Luth raped Hirth after Luth pushed open the door to her apartment. (At the time, Newman-Caddell lived one floor below Hirth.) Newman-Caddell told the detectives that Luth had said wanted to “get wild” because it was his birthday. Newman-Caddell told the detectives that no one else was involved. Hirth tells Kopsa she believes there was at least one other assailant.

Luth and Newman-Caddell are being held in jail in Johnson County. Newman-Caddell has not yet entered a plea in the criminal case in Jackson County, which remains under investigation.

Hirth tells Kopsa she went into the bathroom and threw up when the Independence detective who investigated her case notified her of the DNA match to the case in Johnson County.

“Then there was a lot of anger it happened to someone else,” Hirth said. “I was devastated about that.”