Suspected serial rapist who works at prominent business arrested in connection with cases dating back to 2000s
By Karen Anderson & Kevin Rothstein
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BOSTON (WCVB) — A Massachusetts man who works at a prominent Boston business and is suspected of several rapes, including at least one incident dating back 19 years ago, is in the custody of Boston police.
The Boston Police Department announced late Monday night that 42-year-old Ivan Wai Cheung, of Quincy, was arrested at about 5:10 p.m. on four outstanding warrants.
Cheung is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday on four counts of aggravated rape, four counts of aggravated rape of a child and two counts of aggravated statutory rape.
According to Boston police, the four incidents date back to 2003, 2005 and 2006.
Sources tell 5 Investigates Cheung works for State Street, the banking giant headquartered in Boston’s Financial District. A spokesperson for the company said on Tuesday morning: “The individual has been immediately suspended pending further investigation.”
The arrest is the result of a new Boston police initiative to revisit cold case rapes. The initiative, funded by a federal grant, pays for sophisticated DNA testing of rape kits that — until now — had not yielded enough DNA to test.
The initiative has also helped bring more modern techniques to the Boston Police Sexual Assault Unit, allowing them to build a spreadsheet of unsolved rapes to look for so-far undetected patterns, for example.
The grant is also paying for Boston police to digitize case files going back to the 1980s and hire a criminal analyst to work with the lab and investigators.
Earlier this summer, 5 Investigates’ Karen Anderson was granted rare access inside the Boston police crime lab, and sat down with the crime lab director, the police lieutenant leading the sex assault unit, and the police department’s director of research and development to talk about the initiative.
“They’re the ones that are going to be sitting down with these detectives and going through these big boxes of evidence,” Maria Cheevers, the research director, said in the interview, referring to the crime analysts. “What are all these other databases out there that we can start looking in and identifying modus operandi and other trends? And if you know who this person is, how do we get them?”
As part of the initiative, Boston police are working to identify unsolved rapes that are linked by an unknown suspect’s DNA. They are also looking through old police databases of cases to find new leads.
Boston police are also hiring a victim’s advocate to work with survivors when their cases are reopened.
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