The case against a man accused of raping a woman at knifepoint on the Penn State golf course nearly 26 years ago moved forward on Tuesday as he made his first appearance in a Centre County court.
Kurt A. Rillema, 54, appeared remotely for his preliminary arraignment from a prison in Michigan, where he has been incarcerated since last year after pleading no contest to a similar crime there. He is serving a sentence of 10 to 15 years in the Michigan case.
Centre County Magisterial District Judge Casey McClain set bail at $100,000. Rillema subsequently waived a preliminary hearing, which would have been his first opportunity to challenge the case, and is next scheduled for formal arraignment on July 15.
Rillema was charged in April 2023 after investigators said DNA evidenced linked him to the rape of a 19-year-old Penn State student in 2000 and a similar attack in 1999 at a Michigan golf course.
The woman in the Centre County case was jogging near the 18th hole of the Blue Course at about 8:15 p.m. on July 27, 2000, when a man approached her and first asked for a Band-Aid, according to a criminal complaint. He then held a knife to her throat, dragged her to a wooded area, punched her and raped her, investigators wrote.
A DNA sample from a rape kit was uploaded to a federal database. In 2004, investigators found that the DNA profile matched a forensic sample in the 1999 Michigan case, in which a man asked a golf course employee for directions to the clubhouse then approached her when she was alone behind a building, threatened her with violence and raped her.
In 2011, a Penn State detective 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. A decade passed without any leads before Penn State police detective Nick Sproveri reopened the investigation in July 2021 and collaborated with law enforcement in Michigan, recognizing that that a genealogical DNA approach could lead to a suspect.
Genetic genealogy results determined in 2023 that the suspect was likely Rillema or one of his two brothers. Each of the brothers was investigated, and the detectives determined Kurt Rillema was the likely assailant.
Investigators collected a DNA sample from a Styrofoam cup discarded by Rillema and testing found it matched the profile of the perpetrator in both cases.
Rillema was arrested at his home in Oakland County, Michigan in April 2023. He pleaded no contest in December 2024 to criminal sexual conduct in the Michigan case and was sentenced in January 2025.
Centre County prosecutors have continued to push forward with the 2000 case, in which Rillema is charged with 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 victim in the Penn State golf course assault has a filed a civil lawsuit against Rillema, which is pending in the Centre County Court of Common Pleas.
