Man charged in serial rapes of Penn State students in State College pleads guilty
A Port Matilda man accused of raping four Penn State students over seven years in State College pleaded guilty Thursday and faces decades in state prison.
Jeffrey P. Fields, 37, pleaded guilty to all but two of the charges filed against him, including felony counts of rape and sexual assault. Three of the four women attended the hearing by video conferencing.
Fields raped the women in August 2010, January and April 2011, and July 2017. Each woman told State College police investigators they were raped by a man in the pre-dawn hours outdoors in the Highlands section of the borough.
Fields was accused of beating one woman until she was unconscious, bloodied and bruised. She asked a nurse at Mount Nittany Medical Center “how someone could have done these things to her, and kept doing them, when she was pleading with him so much to stop,” police wrote in a charging document.
Defense lawyer Steve Trialonas declined comment.
Investigators Stephen Bosak and Nicole Eckley identified Fields as a suspect using genetic genealogy, a technique that matches DNA samples with profiles from genetic testing companies for consumers.
The process has been used to break open dozens of high-profile cold cases throughout the United States, including at least one other case in Centre County.
The investigation won Bosak a share of the Centre County Law Enforcement Officer of the Year award in 2021. The veteran detective’s investigation was “undoubtedly the finest piece of detective work I have seen in my career to date,” Centre County Deputy District Attorney Sean McGraw said in July.
Fields was arrested in July 2020, nearly a decade after the first rape. He’s detained at the Centre County Correctional Facility. Bail was denied.
A sentencing date was not scheduled. All four women are expected to testify during a daylong hearing.
This story was originally published March 10, 2022 at 3:49 PM.