LANSING, Mich. (WOOD) — The Fabius Township supervisor has been charged with multiple counts of criminal sexual conduct after Kalamazoo County task force dedicated to following up on untested rape kits took up a 2010 case.

Kenneth Dwyane Linn, 57, of Three Rivers, was charged in Kalamazoo County with four counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

The Michigan Attorney General’s Office alleges the assault happened in August 2010 after a golf outing at the Sauganash Golf Course in Three Rivers. Investigators say Linn took the 22-year-old alleged victim back to her Portage home and sexually assaulted her.

“She was physically helpless due to extreme intoxication and unable to give consent, resulting in physical injury,” the attorney general’s office said in a Wednesday release.

Authorities say the rape kit in the case wasn’t submitted to the Michigan State Police Forensics Lab until December 2014. It was never actually tested, however, and was sent back to Portage police in January 2015. The Portage Police Chief said that was because the victim did not want to press charges.

It was later submitted to a private lab in 2016 and resubmitted yet again to the state lab in October 2021.

“That investigation has been slowed somewhat as a result of the pandemic over the last couple of years but has been open and ongoing for some time now,” Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting told News 8 Wednesday.

Asked whether Linn was considered a suspect in 2010, Getting said “there was information in regards to a suspect brought forward” when the report was filed, though he did not name Linn as that suspect.

“…That will be brought forward at the preliminary exam coming up,” he added.

The preliminary exam is Nov. 10. Linn’s bond was set at $100,000 cash or surety.

The charges stemmed from the state’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, which was established in 2016 to investigate untested rape kits. In 2009, about 10,000 such kits were found sitting on shelves in the Detroit area, spurring a statewide initiative for processing.

“We had several hundred (untested rape kits) to start with in Kalamazoo County. All of those kits have been tested now,” Getting said. “We’ve handled a majority of the investigations. There are still a handful of cases that are being investigated in Kalamazoo.”

He said when Kalamazoo County launched its SAKI program in 2017, investigators started by triaging which cases might be stymied by statutes of limitations. The ones with a ticking clock were moved to the front of the line. First-degree CSC cases, like the one involving Linn, have no statute of limitations.

“We’re working through that backlog in order to make sure the victims in those cases are represented and have the opportunity to move forward,” Getting said. “Have just taken an approach of trying to reach out, contact victims, find out whether or not they wanted to proceed with a follow-up investigation and have those additional resources committed to doing it. And then having just done our best to move those cases forward as expeditiously as possible.”

Getting said his understanding is that all the old rape kits statewide have been tested but noted that doesn’t automatically bring closure to a case. Sometimes the kits don’t yield any useful DNA.

“What happened after that was to look at the cases, recontact victims, witnesses to determine the viability of moving a case forward,” he said.

“It’s unfortunate we have these cases that are being brought up after lengthy delays. But I think the more important takeaway is that justice is being done in these cases,” he added. “There were various reasons why some of these cases were not pursued initially but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to pursue them now. It’s just the opposite. It’s right to pursue them now in order to make sure our victims are being represented.”

Anyone with more information about Linn or the case can contact SAKI Investigator Richard Johnson at 269.569.0515 or rajohn@kalcounty.com.

—News 8’s Byron Tollefson contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: Based on a release from the state AG, a previous version of this article said Sauganash Golf Course was in Kalamazoo County. It is in St. Joseph County.