Editor's note: A Greene County jury found Graves not guilty on May 15, 2024 for the 2019 charge. The charges from 2023 are still pending.
A Springfield man was booked into jail and appeared in court this week, accused of raping a woman in December 2023 — while he was out on bond for a rape case from 2019.
According to the Greene County prosecutor’s request for his re-arrest, Alexander Isiah Eugene Graves was wearing a court-ordered GPS monitor at the time of the most recent alleged assault.
Graves, 26, is charged with first-degree rape for an arrest in 2019. He is charged with second-degree rape and second-degree sodomy for another set of allegations from 2023.
Graves also has a Christian County warrant for failing to appear on a charge of attempted sex trafficking of a child under 18 for an incident that happened in March 2023.
According to court documents, Graves was noncompliant with the bond conditions from the first-degree rape charge nine times, and six warrants were issued for his arrest as a result of those noncompliance reports.
“The defendant continues to defy court orders and has now even committed a new sexual offense while out on bond,” the prosecutor wrote in a request for his re-arrest. “There are simply no bond conditions that will keep the community safe.”
Graves was booked into the Greene County Jail on Feb. 9, but according to online court records, he was ordered to be released on Feb. 15 after posting a $250,000 bond. According to bond conditions, he must go directly to a residential treatment program.
Graves is scheduled to have a jury trial for the 2019 rape case in May in Greene County. He is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing for the 2023 rape and sodomy charges in March in Greene County.
He is set for a bond appearance hearing in a Christian County courtroom on Feb. 27.
2019: Woman claims man gave her a drink. The next thing she remembers is waking up in hospital
According to a probable cause statement filed against Graves, a woman reported to police that she and some of her friends went to the Ernie Biggs Piano Bar in downtown Springfield around 10 p.m. on June 12, 2019.
She said a large group of people was around her and her friends while they were drinking and that she had a few shots. The last shot she remembers was brought on a tray by someone she did not recognize and who did not work at the bar, the woman said.
The next thing the woman remembered after taking that shot was being woken up at a hospital, surrounded by medical personnel and by her father.
One of the women’s friends, identified as “DP” in the probable cause statement, reportedly told police that when he didn’t hear from the woman, he began calling her phone. When she didn’t answer, DP used a location app on their phones to find her location.
DP went to the address and spoke to someone, whose name is redacted in the statement. DP told that person he was concerned about the woman’s safety. That person told DP he didn’t do anything to the woman.
According to the statement, DP then found the woman lying face down on a bed. DP told police he shook the woman once and she didn’t wake up. He continued to shake her and the woman groaned. DP said he eventually got the woman awake enough to walk and he took her to Mercy Hospital.
The woman told the police officer she believed she was raped and that her underwear was missing when she woke.
She showed the officer Instagram messages between her and Graves in which the woman asked what happened the night before. Graves allegedly responded, telling her, “You really wasn’t blacked out, you were fully functional.” Graves messaged her that they had sex.
The woman told the police she did not give consent to Graves to have sex, and based on her condition at the time of the encounter, she didn’t believe she was capable of giving consent to have sex.
Defense attorney: ‘None of it adds up'
Graves' defense attorney, Lacon Marie Smith, spoke to the Hauxeda by phone Feb. 15. She said she believes Graves is innocent and described her client as “clean cut” and “from a good family.”
“He's been a barber in Springfield for years,” Smith said. “He is church-going — a very kind young man. The only criminal history he has is for a misdemeanor DWI.”
Smith went on to say the alleged victim from the 2019 case is from a prominent family, and that the woman's prominence is why her client is being prosecuted.
“All I can say is we would not be here if it was not the family that the complaining witness is from,” Smith said, referring to the 2019 incident. “There's a complete lack of evidence. All the evidence is that person was ready, willing and able and had consented earlier in the night to activities with Alex.”
2023: Woman claims she smoked pot with Graves and then she ‘could not move’
On March 8, 2023, police took a report from a woman who said she had been raped by Graves.
According to the probable cause statement in the 2023 case, the woman said she met Graves online while looking for friends on Facebook Dating. She said she allowed Graves to come to her apartment to hang out, but she didn’t intend to have sex with him.
The woman said Graves offered her marijuana, which she initially declined, but then smoked with him. The woman said she could not move after smoking the marijuana, and that Graves removed her clothing and sexually assaulted her.
Soon after the incident, the woman had a sexual assault examination at a Springfield hospital. Her forensic assault kit and a urine sample were sent to the Missouri State Highway Patrol Crime Laboratory in Springfield for testing.
Her medical records revealed the woman had multiple visible injuries to her body, including to her neck, breasts, buttocks, elbow, lower extremities and an abrasion to her external genitalia, according to the probable cause statement. The toxicology report showed she had “Carboxy-THC” in her urine, which is a compound that indicates the strong probability that the person who provided the sample consumed marijuana.
According to the statement, police learned Graves was on GPS monitoring at the time of the incident. Those GPS records showed he was present at the woman’s apartment complex on the afternoon of March 8, 2023.
As for the 2023 incident, Smith questioned the woman's credibility.
“I think the probable cause statement stands for itself,” Smith said. “I mean, who can believe someone that is on an online dating app saying she is on there to meet a friend? None of it adds up.”
Another 2023 charge in another county
Graves is facing one count of second-degree attempted sexual trafficking of a child under 18 from an alleged incident on March 8, 2023. Attempted sexual trafficking of a child is an unclassified felony under Missouri law, which means the range of punishment upon conviction does not fall into one of five classes used to sentence criminals.
According to the two-paragraph felony complaint filed against Graves in Christian County, someone identified as “Confidential Victim” reported to Christian County sheriff's deputies she was being harassed.
She alleged she has Facebook messages from Graves asking if she has security cameras on her house. “Confidential Victim” told the deputy that Graves asked her to take a taxi to his house and to smoke marijuana with him. She said she blocked Graves on Facebook, but she said he continued to harass her on Snapchat.
In the court document, the deputy described the girl as being “very alarmed” and in “emotional distress.”
