Woman sues alleged rapist's estate

PUT-IN-BAY — A Stark County woman filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking a damage award from the estate of Mark Mathys, an island businessman accused of being a serial rapist who was killed in a race car accident last year. Mathys The woman reported being raped in a pickup parked behind an old cinema at the Sandusky Mall on July 9, 2008, after arranging to meet Mathys through an online dating service known as sugarbabies.com. She reported it to the Perkins police, but Mathys was not identified until years later after DNA tests from untested rape kits were finally tested by the state's crime lab. DNA samples from two victims connected directly to Mathys, according to the crime lab's report. A state crime lab agent did eventually talk with the woman, according to the lawsuit, and told her Mathys was the man who raped her. The Ohio Attorney General's Office took over the investigation but never brought charges against Mathys. Attorney General Dave Yost never provided any explanation for why Mathys was never charged. A third victim, also connected by DNA, was identified, but she died by suicide before the investigator talked with her, according to a report from the attorney general. The woman was 21 when the assault happened. Mathys was 44, according to the report. When the state agent interviewed Mathys, he told her he met as many as "five to 10 girls" using the dating site and had sex with them. He told the agent the dating pages were "thinly veiled prostitution sites," but added that he didn't pay the women. "I never really consummated a financial arrangement," he told the agent. Mathys died on Oct. 28, 2023, in an accident on a race track in Daytona Beach, Florida. Mathys, who was a partner in the development of the Put-in-Bay Resort and other lodgings businesses in Put-in-Bay, was a series race car driver. His car became inoperable on the track, and he died after being struck by another race car. At the time of his death, Mathys was a wealthy man. He sold the Put-in-Bay Resort in 2021 for more than $20 million, recorded as the largest real estate transaction in county history. The state agreed to release the records of its investigations of Mathys' after his death but refused to answer any questions about why the evidence was never presented to a grand jury or why charges were never filed. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, seeks punitive and compensatory damage awards from the estate. Eric F. Long, with the Cleveland law firm of Friedman, Nemecek, Long & Grant is representing the alleged victim.