Daughter’s call and discarded coffee cup help identify man in 35-year-old Cincinnati rape case

CINCINNATI —

For 35 years, Dana Beatty waited to learn the identity of the masked man who attacked her in her Cincinnati apartment.

Editor’s Note: This story deals with sexual violence and may be difficult for some readers.

The answer would ultimately come from advances in DNA technology, a phone call from Beatty’s daughter, and an abandoned Starbucks cup marked with just one name: “Fred.”

On August 1, 1989, Beatty, then 29 and working for IBM, returned to her apartment in Cincinnati’s Columbia-Tusculum neighborhood. She noticed that her door was unlocked and the bathroom light was on.

A masked man dressed from head to toe in black then came out of his kitchen.

“He had a butcher knife and he immediately grabbed me, put the knife to my neck and I screamed,” Beatty recalled. “He pulled him closer and said ‘Shh,’ which was the only word he ever said the whole time.”

According to federal court documents, the attacker covered Beatty’s eyes with surgical tape and used her stockings to tie her hands and feet to her brass bed. Over the next five and a half hours, he raped her repeatedly.

“I thought he was killing me. That’s it,” Beatty said.

After her attacker left, Beatty broke free and ran to a neighbor for help.

Police found the phones disconnected and a threatening note recorded on the room phone. Beatty remembered it reading: “No police. I’ll be back. Miss IBM.”

A hospital examination made it possible to preserve the DNA left by the attacker. Investigators also found two unidentified fingerprints, but the case remains unsolved.

Beatty eventually married, became a mother and rebuilt her life, although she continued to live with post-traumatic stress.

“I was determined not to let this monster stop me from living my life,” she said.

Calling a girl reopens the case

In 2023, Beatty’s daughter Andra heard a true crime podcast about investigators using new DNA technology to solve decades-old crimes.

“Andra’s antenna went up and she said, ‘This is exactly what we need for my mom,'” Beatty said.

Without first telling her parents, Andra contacted the Ohio Attorney General’s office and asked who could help her with her mother’s case. The investigation eventually reached Cincinnati cold case Detective Jeffrey Smallwood.

Beatty said investigators’ DNA research revealed his attacker had Jewish ancestry. When asked if she knew anyone in Cincinnati with this past, one person finally came to mind: her best friend’s ex-husband.

“I said, ‘There’s no way it’s him,’” Beatty recalled. “He’s a doctor. He doesn’t match the description.”

This man was Frederick Louis Tanzer, a Cincinnati area physician. Beatty had attended Tanzer’s wedding and knew him through his ex-wife, but said she never considered him a suspect.

Investigators still needed a direct sample of Tanzer’s DNA to confirm the genetic hypothesis.

The cup marked “Fred”

On April 9, 2024, FBI surveillance specialists followed Tanzer from her home to a Bureau of Motor Vehicles office in Milford, according to the federal complaint.

Tanzer entered with a Starbucks cup. After throwing it in an almost empty trash bag, an FBI specialist recovered it. The cup was marked “FRED”.

Testing by the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office found that DNA recovered from the cut matched the DNA profile of sperm preserved from Beatty’s dress after the 1989 attack, according to court documents.

Investigators then told Beatty what they found.

“At the end of the conversation, he said, ‘Dana, Fred Tanzer did this to you,'” she recalls.

But the answer she had waited decades for ran into a devastating legal obstacle: The statute of limitations for prosecuting the 1989 crimes had expired around 1995.

Tanzer could not be charged for the attack.

An FBI ruse and a signed lie

Investigators came up with another approach.

On December 11, 2024, an FBI agent and Smallwood interviewed Tanzer at his home. As a ruse, they told him they were investigating allegations that Cincinnati police mishandled Beatty’s case because an officer had once been considered a suspect.

Before the interrogation began, the FBI agent warned Tanzer that lying to a federal agent was a crime.

Tanzer denied seeing or interacting with Beatty on the day of the attack, according to court documents. He then signed a form certifying that his answers were true.

Investigators already had DNA evidence contradicting these statements.

After officers confronted Tanzer, he requested an attorney and was arrested.

Beatty had just landed at the Columbus airport when she received the call.

“I said, ‘What’s going on?’ And he said, ‘We got it,'” she recalled. “Thirty-five years later.”

Tanzer later admitted to committing the 1989 attack and pleaded guilty to three counts of making false statements to federal agents.

In January 2026, a federal judge sentenced Tanzer to the statutory maximum sentence of 180 months, or 15 years in prison. He remains in detention since his arrest.

His conviction and sentence relate to the lies he told investigators, not the attack Beatty survived.

“His DNA confirmed his guilt and the evidence indicates that Tanzer is a serial rapist,” U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II said after the sentencing. “Tanzer poses a serious risk to the public and deserves to be in prison not only for his lies but also for the vile attack he was trying to cover up. »

Tanzer has not been convicted of other sexual assaults.

Transform trauma into hope

Beatty said she is sharing her story to give hope to other survivors and to encourage lawmakers to reconsider statutes of limitations for violent sex crimes.

“I can’t stand here after what I’ve been through and let these poor victims not have the chance to get the justice they deserve,” she said.

She also credits her daughter with refusing to allow the case to be forgotten.

“And she did it,” Beatty said. “Saying thank you doesn’t even begin to say how I feel about this little gift from God. »