The man accused of raping a 19-year-old woman at knifepoint on a Penn State golf course more than two decades ago has been sentenced to years in prison for a similar attack in Michigan.

Kurt A. Rillema, 52, was sentenced on Wednesday in Oakland County Circuit Court to 10 to 15 years in prison for third- and fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct in the 1999 assault of a woman at a Michigan golf course, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in a news release. He pleaded no contest to the charges in December when first- and second-degree charges were dropped as part of the plea.

“Rillema will serve serious prison time for his crime,” McDonald said, noting that prosecutors agreed to the plea after consulting with the victim. “I know reliving this trauma after so many years wasn’t easy for the victim. Her strength sustained this case, and I applaud the relentless work by law enforcement that allowed us to deliver a just ending for her.”

Centre County District Attorney Bernie Cantorna said his office will still prosecute Rillema for the Penn State assault, and that he expects to see movement in the case in the next several months.

Investigators in Centre County and Michigan said that DNA evidence and forensic genealogy linked Rillema to both crimes. He was charged in April 2023 following a cooperative investigation between Penn State police and the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office and arrested at his home in Michigan.

In the Centre County case, the woman was jogging near the 18th hole of the Blue Course at about 8:15 p.m. on July 27, 2000, when she was approached by a thin white male, approximately 25 to 26 years old, with brown hair who was wearing khaki shorts, golf spikes and no shirt, according to a criminal complaint. He asked her first for a Band-Aid then for directions to the clubhouse, and after telling him she couldn’t help, she attempted to leave the area.

He then came up behind her and held a knife to her throat, telling her she would not be harmed if she kept quiet, police wrote. He dragged her to a wooded area, punched her in the stomach, and raped her, according to the complaint. He allegedly told her not to tell anyone or he would come after her, then fled the area.

A DNA sample from a rape kit was sent to the state police crime lab, which developed a DNA profile and uploaded it to the federal database CODIS in 2001.

A CODIS search in 2004 found that the DNA profile matched a forensic sample in the 1999 Michigan case, in which a 22-year-old employee at the Twin Lakes Golf Course in Oakland Township said a white male asked her for directions to the clubhouse then approached her when she was alone behind a building, threatened her with violence and raped her.

In 2011, then-Penn State detective Ryan Olson filed a criminal complaint against an unknown male, referred to as “John Doe,” whose DNA matched the profile in order to preserve the statute of limitations.

Over the next 10 years, no leads developed. In July 2021, Penn State detective Nick Sproveri took a new look at the investigation, recognizing that a genealogical DNA approach could lead to a suspect, as had happened in two other recent Centre County cold cases.

Sproveri worked with Oakland County Sheriff’s Office detective sergeant Eric Tremonti, who submitted the Michigan DNA sample to a genetic genealogy lab in 2022. Early the following year, genetic genealogy results and further investigation narrowed in on Rillema, according to court documents. He lived close to the Twin Lakes Golf Course at the time of the 1999 rape, and police concluded he was likely visiting one of his brothers, who attended Penn State in 2000, at the time of the Blue Course rape, investigators wrote.

Investigators conducted surveillance on Rillema and on January 31 recovered a discarded Styrofoam coffee cup from which he had been drinking. The cup was sent to the Michigan State Police crime lab for testing and was found to have DNA matching the DNA profile of the perpetrator in the 1999 Michigan rape and 2000 Penn State rape, according to court documents.

Rillema’s attorney in the Michigan case told The Detroit News that they plan to appeal there because his defense was denied access to information about the genealogical work and how he was identified.

In Centre County, he faces felony counts of rape, sexual assault, and aggravated indecent assault, and misdemeanor counts of indecent assault, unlawful restraint, simple assault and recklessly endangering another person.

The woman who was assaulted at the Blue Course has also filed a civil lawsuit against Rillema in the Centre County Court of Common Pleas.