Frayser Rapist Sentenced to 25 Years

Aug. 12, 2022 – A 28-year-old man convicted earlier this year of sexually assaulting a Frayser woman as she was returning home from work in 2017 was sentenced to 25 years in prison Thursday, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.

The sentence for defendant Michael M. Cook Jr. is to be without parole.

In March of this year, a Criminal Court jury deliberated just 10 minutes before convicting Cook on one count of aggravated rape and two counts of aggravated kidnapping.

The woman testified that Cook abducted her in the driveway of her home around 6 a.m. on Aug. 20, 2017, showing her a gun on his hip and forcing her to accompany him to a nearby vacant house.

He raped her there and kept the condom that he used, putting it in his pocket. Cook then put the gun to her head and told her to count to 200 before she moved, or that he would come back and kill her.

Hours later, police recovered a car near the crime scene that had been stolen a block from the defendant’s home. Inside the car they found items the victim had described her rapist wearing, including a black ski mask, a black thermal hoodie and black jeans.

The condom also was found in the car, and testing by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation lab showed a positive match for both the victim’s and the defendant’s DNA on the condom.

The case was prosecuted by Asst. Dist. Attys. Devon Dennis and Gavin Smith of the District Attorney’s Special Victims Unit (SVU) which handles cases involving rape, child sexual abuse, severe physical abuse of children, elder abuse, and vulnerable-adult abuse.