Natchez financial planner accused of second rape in New Orleans

Published 12:06 am Sunday, May 12, 2019

From the New Orleans Advocate

NEW ORLEANS (TNS) — A Natchez financial planner who has been out on bail for more than two years on an allegation that he raped a Tinder date in his Warehouse District condo has been accused of raping another woman there.

William A. McDonough Jr. now faces the possibility of a second 40-year sentence after his arrest Wednesday on another count of second-degree rape.

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He has posted $50,000 bail in the latest case, but it could serve as a reason for prosecutors to seek an increase in his bail on the 2016 allegation.

Police said they investigated the most recent claim at the end of April. A woman told them that on the night of the Muses parade, Feb. 28, she asked McDonough to stop engaging in aggressive sexual behavior while they were in his bedroom in the Cotton Mill condo building on Poeyfarre Street.

“You have to stop,” the woman told McDonough, according to an arrest warrant.

According to the woman’s account, she and McDonough struggled but he pinned her legs down and raped her. She said she woke up with a black eye. McDonough told her to claim that she had been hit by a bag of beads thrown from a float, according to her account.

The detective who obtained the arrest warrant, Claudia Bruce, did not explain why she did not interview the woman until two months after the alleged assault.

Bruce was also the lead detective who investigated another woman’s claim that McDonough raped her after they met on the dating app Tinder in September 2016.

That woman said she went to a concert and a bar with McDonough, consuming MDMA — also known as ecstasy — and alcohol, before returning to his apartment.

The woman said McDonough had sex with her even though she told him not to. “You have daughters,” the woman said she told McDonough.

She went to a hospital afterward for a sexual assault examination.

A magistrate commissioner set McDonough’s bail in that case at $30,000, which he quickly posted.

Prosecutors charged him in December 2016; the case is still pending in Criminal District Court Judge Tracey Flemings Davillier’s courtroom.

Prosecutors could file a motion seeking to have McDonough’s bail raised in the earlier case, citing his latest arrest as the reason.

The accuser in the first case has separately filed a lawsuit in Civil District Court seeking financial damages.

In the latest case, Magistrate Commissioner Robert Blackburn set McDonough’s bail on second-degree rape and another count at $50,000.

McDonough is represented by attorney Frank DeSalvo, who did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

McDonough is an independent financial planner based in Natchez according to his website.