The jury took less than two hours to convict Vaylan Glazebrook on Friday of 14 felonies, including seven counts of rape and one count of attempted murder.
The charges stemmed from crimes in 2014 against two IU students and a Bloomington police officer. Glazebrook, 22, will likely spend the rest of his life in prison based on the crimes he was convicted of and the lengths of time served for each. His sentencing is scheduled for 11:15 a.m. March 29 in Monroe County Circuit Court.
Across four days of the trial, the prosecution presented evidence and testimony that told the story of the early morning of Nov. 9, 2014, when two men terrorized students in their own home. The following is reconstructed from witness testimony, video evidence, photographs and court documents.
***
An IU senior went to bed around 1 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2014. She had spent the day before studying before tucking into her blue sheets, watching TV and drifting to sleep.
A noise awakened her around 4:30 a.m. She looked up to see a man holding a black handgun. The whites of his eyes stood out to her against his dark skin.
“Don’t fucking look at me,” he told her. She pulled a blanket over her head and curled up facing the wall.
The man asked her about a photograph in her bedroom, in which she stood next to a little girl in a purple dress.
If she ever wanted to see that little girl again, he told her, she better not look at him.
He began rummaging through her room and reached across her, grabbing her cell phone and charger.
Then another man then came into the room, shoving the woman’s roommate through the door.
Get in the bed, the second man told the woman he’d dragged from across the hall. She crawled under the covers and saw her roommate curled in the fetal position, crying.
The second woman had been asleep in her own bed minutes before. She awoke to the sound of her jewelry holder crashing to the floor and a lighter-skinned black man pointing a black handgun at her.
She screamed.
He asked her if she had a condom, and she pulled one from her nightstand. He tucked it into his pocket without putting it on.
He then unbuckled his pants and forced her to perform oral sex. After a few minutes, he dragged her up and pushed her into the room with the darker-skinned man and the other woman.
Once all four people were together, the men switched victims.
The darker-skinned man moved to the woman from across the hall and assaulted her with his fingers, causing pain inside. He then raped her vaginally, orally and anally. She could feel a gun pressed to her thigh.
The lighter-skinned man put on the condom and raped the first woman orally, vaginally and anally. She could feel a gun pressed to her head.
Then he moved away from her, and she heard a gunshot.
She thought her roommate had been killed.
**
Officer William Abram was sitting in his police cruiser at the Bloomington Police Department when he heard a report over the radio of a possible rape in progress.
“I think there’s a guy in here trying to rape my roommates,” an IU student had whispered to dispatchers as she hid in her bedroom closet. “I heard screaming.”
Abram immediately set off for the apartment on the 500 block of East 12th Street, arriving in about five minutes.
He parked his car out front, activated his body camera and went to the front door. It hung open 6 to 8 inches.
He pushed it further, staying in the doorway, and saw a man in a maroon sweatshirt at the end of a hallway pulling up his pants.
The man said something his body camera couldn’t pick up.
“Police department,” Abram said.
The man said something else and darted out of the hallway into a bedroom. Abram walked back outside. He heard gunshots, then saw two men scramble out the window.
He began to run after them.
“Police!” he shouted. "Put your hands up!"
One man looked over his shoulder, pointing a gun. Abram saw the muzzle flash and felt something whiz by. He wasn’t sure if he’d been hit. He fired back, one shot at each man.
“Shots fired,” he said over his radio to other cops en route. “Step it up!”
The men ran southwest, Abram following behind. He heard one of them drop something that hit the ground with a metallic clang.
The men split, and Abram followed the one who had shot at him, with darker skin and a gray sweater. He chased him a few more blocks, joined by another officer.
A third officer, Ben Burns, then pulled up in a cruiser, his headlights flashing over a man stopped between houses.
Burns stepped out.
“On the ground!” he shouted at the man. “Get your hands up!”
The man didn’t comply. Burns pulled him down using one hand.
“I shot him,” Abram said. “He might be injured.”
Abram approached the man and saw blood. He tore one of the man’s sleeves off and found a bullet wound on his right arm.
Abram then began to perform first aid on the man who minutes before had tried to shoot him.
**
When the men scrambled out the bedroom window, the two women each discovered the other was not injured. No one had been shot inside the apartment.
One woman immediately banged on their third roommate's door for her to open it. She didn't.
The woman then ran to the front door, still ajar, and locked it before joining the other woman in the bedroom without a broken window.
Sitting in the closet, one of them dialed 911.
“Someone just broke into my apartment and raped me and my roommate,” she said.
The dispatcher told them their third roommate, who never saw the men, was on another line and had been for a few minutes. Police were coming.
The dispatcher asked if they’d known the men.
No.
“I’m so sorry,” the dispatcher told her.
“It’s okay,” the woman replied. Then she heard someone at the front door.
“Hold on for a minute,” the dispatcher replied, trying to confirm the knockers were actual officers. “I don’t want you to get hurt any worse than you have been.”
The people shouted they would kick in the front door. The woman told the dispatcher, who insisted she stay put until she knew it was an officer.
Men barged in, and the dispatcher finally confirmed officers were there.
**
Officer Jordan Hasler rode with the dark-skinned man in an ambulance.
Someone removed his jacket, and it hit floor with a thud.
Hasler looked inside to find a cell phone, charger, women’s sunglasses and a Wii remote.
The ambulance stopped at IU Health Bloomington Hospital, and the man was rushed into the emergency room. Hasler stayed with the man, whose name he learned was Vaylan Glazebrook.
After being examined, Glazebrook slept later that morning, Hasler still by his side. Then, he awoke.
“I know I did something wrong,” Glazebrook told Hasler. “How long is this going to take? How many years am I looking at? I know I’ve got it coming to me, and I’m going to take it like a man.”
**
Sexual assault nurses examined each woman’s body later that morning.
The first woman’s eyes were red from crying. Her left thigh had scratches. She wanted to call her mom but her phone had been stolen.
The second woman was quiet and cooperative but in pain from the assault.
The nurses checked some boxes on a form: each woman had been pushed, shoved and held down. One said she had been choked.
DNA samples were taken from each of them to create a profile of their own DNA and possibly find DNA from their attackers.
None was found.
Swabs were also taken from Glazebrook and the second man, Michael Deweese. Deweese had been captured that morning after he was found in a car with a third man, Jesse Benti-Torres, who was later charged with burglary and two counts of assisting a criminal.
Deweese was still wearing the condom he’d stolen earlier that night when he was put in an ambulance to treat a gunshot wound to his leg.
The Indiana State Police lab later determined a swab from the outside of the condom matched one of the women.
The lab also found a swab from Glazebrook’s penis matched the other.
***
About seven hours after the chase, Glazebrook sat in a conference room at BPD's headquarters.
The 19-year-old laid his head down as BPD Detective Scott Reynolds entered the room. Glazebrook glanced up at the detective, then looked back down.
Reynolds reread Glazebrook his rights and asked him to sign forms acknowledging he understood them.
The detective wanted to know how the man — who told him he was from the west side of Indianapolis — had ended up in Bloomington, who he had driven down with and why he went to the apartment on East 12th Street.
Glazebrook told him he didn't even remember being on that street, but he'd come to town to party. He drank a six-pack and some Hennessy before leaving Indianapolis, he told the detective, and continued to drink after getting to Bloomington.
Reynolds asked him what he did remember.
"Getting shot," he said.
Reynolds told him they had found guns, had witnesses and now, the police wanted to know "what the actual plan was, if there was one."
"You all trying to go all 'he said, she said' at me," Glazebrook told Reynolds.
He was going to be booked on attempted murder charges, Reynolds told him. Glazebrook repeated the charge to him incredulously. That's what you get when you shoot at the police, the detective replied.
Glazebrook wouldn't answer questions about how he had gotten into the apartment, what happened once he was inside or whether he had been near the Village Pantry across the street from the building.
"I told you," Glazebrook said. "I blacked out. I don't remember half the night."
Reynolds asked Glazebrook whether he or Deweese always had guns with them when they partied. His answer about himself was inaudible in the video of the interview.
But his answer about Deweese was clear.
"He keep his gun on him," Glazebrook said.
The Indianapolis men had attended parties that night, Glazebrook told Reynolds, but were asked to leave one because they did not know anybody.
After discussing Glazebrook's gunshot wound, Reynolds told him he would be put in a holding cell and then appear before a judge.
Reynolds left and Glazebrook, alone in the conference room, rested his head back on the table.
"Shit," he said.
Jesse Naranjo contributed reporting.
