Cold-Case Rape Defendant Pleads Guilty

July 13, 2021 – A suspected serial rapist who was set to be tried Monday on a 2008 rape case involving a 12-year-old girl pled guilty to that case and to seven other pending cases, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.

Defendant Quantez Person, 46, pled guilty in Criminal Court to five felony counts of aggravated rape and three felony counts of rape. He was sentenced to terms of 15 years in prison for each aggravated rape and eight years for each rape.

The sentences will be served concurrently for an effective term of 15 years. There will be no possibility for parole and Person will be placed on the Violent Sex Offender Registry for life.

In three previous trials, Person was acquitted twice and a third ended in a hung jury.

He was set to be tried Monday in the rape of a young girl who he picked up on May 1, 2008, on Jackson in North Memphis by pretending to be a friend of her mother. He made the girl drink vodka as he drove to a cemetery off of Elvis Presley Boulevard in South Memphis where he raped her in the front seat.

A rape kit was completed but was not tested until years later. In 2018, DNA testing linked Person to that rape and to nearly a dozen others that occurred between 2000 and 2011.

The young victim in the case that was set for trial this week approved of Monday’s settlement. She is now 25 and had been preparing to testify.  

The case was handled by Asst. Dist. Attys. Abby Wallace and Gavin Smith as members of the District Attorney’s Special Victims Unit which handles cases of rape, child sexual abuse, severe physical abuse of children, elder abuse and abuse of vulnerable adults.

Wallace is now assigned to the Special Prosecution Unit 8 which seeks maximum sentencing for repeat felony offenders.