Editor’s note: This story, originally published at 11:17 a.m. on Dec. 20, 2024, was updated at 1:53 p.m. on Dec. 20, 2024, to add a statement from Pearson’s public defender.
The North Carolina man who was convicted in October of raping two women in Silver Spring in 1981, is expected to serve 17 years in prison following his sentencing Thursday in Montgomery County Circuit Court, the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office said Thursday in a statement.
Circuit Court Judge Rachel McGuckian sentenced Marion Edward Pearson, 67, to 40 years in prison Thursday, with all but 17 years suspended and two years of supervised probation upon his release, the statement said. Pearson is also required to be registered as a sex offender for life.
Pearson pleaded guilty in October to one count of second-degree rape and one count of second-degree sexual offense in connection to separate attacks on two women in April and June of 1981, according to the statement. A plea agreement set Pearson’s maximum sentence to 17 years in prison for the case.
Pearson is being represented by public defender Samantha Sandler, who said in a statement emailed to MoCo360 that Pearson has “expressed extreme remorse and taken full responsibility for his actions.”
“While we wish there had been an opportunity for these charges to be addressed years ago, while he was serving time in North Carolina, as family members and neighbors attested to at the sentencing hearing, he has since become a model citizen, good neighbor, and mentor to others in the community,” Sandler said. “At 67 years old, Mr. Pearson is the epitome of a changed man from the person who committed these crimes more than 40 years ago.”
In November 2022, Montgomery County police arrested Pearson after detectives from the department’s cold case unit and forensic specialists identified the open case and submitted DNA evidence collected from the incidents for further testing. Pearson was found to be a match after a search of the FBI’s National DNA Index System connected the DNA to him.
According to the state’s attorney’s office, Pearson served 22 years in a North Carolina prison until 2020 for a “series of first-degree rapes.” Pearson lived in Prince George’s County and had been arrested several times for assault, indecent exposure and peeping-tom, between 1980 and 1999, according to the state’s attorney’s office.
After Pearson pleaded guilty in October, State’s Attorney John McCarthy thanked the county police department’s cold case unit for bringing closure to the case and said he hoped the conviction could provide comfort to the survivors of the crimes.
“After more than four decades the defendant is finally being held accountable for his violent action in Montgomery County,” McCarthy said.
The assaults
The first incident occurred on April 20, 1981, on the 1800 block of University Blvd. West, according to charging documents. The woman “was attacked from behind and forced into a wooded area off the street. The suspect told the victim to ‘shut up’ he wasn’t going to hurt her, just hold her for ransom,” documents stated.
The suspect, now identified as Pearson, then walked the woman farther into the wooded area and used tape to shut her mouth and eyes and bind her hands behind her back, according to the charging documents. Pearson then raped the woman, took her wallet and left the area. He also kept the woman’s underwear.
After the assault, the woman went to a nearby house and knocked on the door to contact the police. She was taken to Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring for an exam and evidence collection, according to the charging documents.
The second incident occurred on June 13, 1981, at approximately 10 p.m. near the 11400 block of Connecticut Avenue, according to charging documents. The second woman was also attacked from behind and forced into a wooded area.
Similar to the April 1981 incident, the suspect asked the woman for money and then taped her eyes and mouth shut and bound her hands behind her back, according to the charging documents. Before the rape, the woman told Pearson she had a sexually transmitted infection, but Pearson questioned her and assaulted her with a stick. According to charging documents, Pearson also urinated and defecated on the woman.
“The victim was able to break free and ran up the embankment to Connecticut Avenue and flagged down a passing motor vehicle. The citizen stopped and picked her up and drove her to the Wheaton-Glenmont Police Station,” the charging document said.
At the scene of the assault, police located articles of clothing belonging to the woman, but not her underwear, according to charging documents. The woman was taken to Montgomery General Hospital in Olney for an exam and evidence collection. Injuries she sustained from the assault required her to get stitches.
The evidence collected from the first victim was later analyzed in 2022 and a DNA profile was obtained that matched Pearson. Based on the similarities in the “modus operandi” of the assaults, including the use of tape, asking for money, withholding underwear and the manner of attack, police determined Pearson to be the suspect of the case, according to the charging documents.
Pearson is being held in the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Boyds.
