WASHINGTON — DC Police say a man suspected of being the "Potomac River Rapist" died in custody Saturday morning.
Giles Warrick was found unresponsive inside his cell at the D.C. jail around 8:02 a.m., according to the Metropolitan Police Department. He was 62-year-old.
Department of Corrections staff and medical personnel began life-saving measures. Fire and Emergency Medical Services arrived a short time later and Warrick pronounce dead.
Warrick was expected to appear again in court on November 29, 2022, for a first-degree murder charge. Police say Warrick stood accused of raping and killing a woman in Georgetown as well as sexually assaulting several others throughout the District and Maryland back in the '90s.
On November 12, 2019, after forensic genealogy identified him as a possible suspect, Warrick was arrested at his home in Conway, South Carolina for crimes committed almost two decades ago.
The last known victim of the suspect was 29-year-old Christine Mirzayan. She was a National Academy of Sciences intern who was walking home from a cookout in Georgetown on August 1, 1998, but she never made it home.
Police said that at around 10 p.m., Mirzayan was walking in the 3600 block of Canal Road Northwest when she was attacked and pulled into a wooded area where she was sexually assaulted and brutally beaten. An autopsy revealed that in addition to being sexually assaulted, she was struck multiple times in the head with a large rock.
Two witnesses eventually told police they had seen Mirzayan walking along a dark road and noticed a man following her. According to police, the witnesses assisted them with a sketch of the man which was age-enhanced and used to assist in Warrick's arrest.
In October 2022, Warrick's attorney argued that DNA evidence connected to the murder of Georgetown intern Christin Mirzayan was "coerced" and shouldn't be admissible in court. Just two weeks ago, a judge ruled against the defense, saying prosecutors could use the DNA collected when police arrested him at his South Carolina home in 2019.
The Office of the Chief Medica Examiner will be conducting an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death.
The incident is currently under investigation.
Man known as the 1990's Potomac River Rapist has been arrested: