North Liberty rapist sentenced to 100 years for two attacks

WATERLOO — A victim of a North Liberty rapist confronted her attacker in court this week as Asante Ajee Walker-Garcia Adams was sentenced to a century in prison.

“Crimes that are this disgusting, this dehumanizing, felt like creations of a sick and twisted mind. They felt like horror fiction. As it turns out, it only takes an equally sick and twisted mind to carry out such actions,” the Cedar Falls woman said Monday in court.

“You didn’t think of your wife and your child when you did this, did you? No, you didn’t. You couldn’t have. In order to have done so, you would have needed to have seen them as people, too,” she said.

She was one of two women whom Walker, 27, attacked and raped after breaking into their apartments a month apart in spring 2023. A Black Hawk County jury found him guilty in October of the attacks.

Walker also is charged with a similar crime in Iowa City in June 2022 and an arrest warrant has been issued for him in an attempted rape in Center Point in May 2023. During Monday’s sentencing, detectives from the Iowa City Police Department were present in the Black Hawk County courtroom.

Prosecutors said Walker entered a Waterloo woman’s apartment near Hawkeye Community College in March 2023. He held a knife to her 3-year-old son’s neck and raped her. He later burglarized an apartment on College Street near the University of Northern Iowa in April 2023 and raped the woman who lived there.

The Cedar Falls victim said she no longer feels safe and takes six medications after being diagnosed with posttraumatic stress, plus additional pain killers for physical nerve damage from the assault.

“I want to sleep again. I want to be at least stable again. I want to feel safe again. I want to walk around in public without fear. I want to feel like a person again, not an object,” she said.

Both women said they wanted to see Walker spend the rest of his life locked up.

Judge David Odekirk sentenced Walker to the maximum allowed by law for the burglary and sexual assault charges of which he was convicted — a string of 25-year sentences added together consecutively for a total of 100 years behind bars.

Walker will have to spend 35 of those years in prison before he can be considered for parole. In the event he is released, Walker will have to register as a sex offender for life, and he would be on lifetime parole.

Walker asked for concurrent time, which could have cut the prison time to 25 years, saying he had time to think about his actions while in jail awaiting the outcome of his case. He said he would “rejoin the community in a positive way.”

“I’ve made grave mistakes. … I regret a lot of things. I apologize to a lot of people. At the same time I know I can’t take back what’s happened,” Walker said.

Prosecutor Heather Jackson said the Waterloo and Cedar Falls victims are concerned Walker would continue to prey on others if he is ever released from prison.

“They are scared for other people,” she said.

Walker currently is set to go to trial in January in Johnson County over a June 2022 attack in Iowa City. Iowa City police responded then to a sexual assault report in the 600 block of S. Lucas Street. The victim said she was in bed when a man burst in, punched her in the face and pulled a sheet over her head, a criminal complaint shows.

Iowa City police released doorbell surveillance video after the assault, asking the public to help identify the man shown. A later warrant search of Walker’s phone showed his wife had confronted him after a University of Iowa Hawk Alert went out, indicating she knew he was in the area at the time. She later texted him a KCRG-TV article, with the doorbell video attached, and asked, "so that's a random guy with dreads, similar eyes, similar height? Happened same time u were there?" the complaint states.

An arrest warrant for Walker has been issued, charging him with third-degree kidnapping, second-degree robbery, assault with intent to commit sexual abuse and false imprisonment in the Center Point case. Linn County deputies obtained a fingerprint from that crime scene, which came back as matching Walker.

Trish Mehaffey of The Gazette contributed to this report.