Convicted Kansas City rapist who bound, gagged victims gets 25 years in prison

A 43-year-old man was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison for kidnapping and sexually assaulting three women in Kansas City over the course of eight months.

Kevin W. March, of Grandview, was handed the sentence five days after he pleaded guilty to 13 felonies — including rape, kidnapping and sodomy — in Jackson County Circuit Court. He has been held in the county jail since February 2020.

The Star previously reported March was arrested after the first alleged assault in June 2019 but charged only with resisting arrest. He then went on to carry out the other two assaults.

Years before, March was accused of another rape by a woman who reported domestic assault in 2007. He was convicted on the assault charges and released from prison inside of a year.

The investigation, led by Kansas City police, began in June 2019 after a person called 911 and reported that a woman was yelling for help somewhere near the northwestern part of Longview Lake.

Responding officers found a woman handcuffed to a tree. She had swollen wrists and arms, and bruises on her back.

She told investigators she first met the man who assaulted her and stole her car on the internet.

He forced her to take drugs and commit a burglary while they were together, she said. He later made her “disrobe,” bound her with duct tape and forced her into the trunk of her own car, according to court documents.

She told police she was let out of the trunk near Longview Lake after riding around “all day,” and forced to perform oral sex on him.

After the woman gave a description of her vehicle, March was spotted by police officers who tried to stop him. He led a lengthy pursuit before he was arrested.

During a police interview, March told investigators he and the woman had consensual sex and denied restraining her. Sexual assault charges were not brought at that time.

More than a month after he was released from custody, a grand jury indicted March for resisting arrest. As his April trial date neared in that case, March allegedly carried out two more assaults that a detective described as similar.

The victim in the first case told detectives March, whom she met on Craigslist years prior, had stolen her car after she invited him to her house.

When she reported the theft, she said, he returned to her house, fired a pellet gun into the side of her head, beat her and tied her up. She said she was blindfolded and put in the shower, and escaped to find March having sex with another woman in her bed.

After being restrained and bound again, she said, she escaped a bedroom closet, grabbed a steak knife and ran outside for help.

Twenty-two days later, the third assault was reported by a woman who had been at an Extended Stay motel in south Kansas City. She said she accepted a ride from March.

She told police March tied her hands and wrapped duct tape around her mouth and face. He also allegedly made her swallow methamphetamine and raped her at two separate locations while they were in the car.

The Star’s Luke Nozicka contributed to this report.