Fresno County man pleads guilty in serial rape case, sentencing set

Cesar Flores pleaded guilty in Fresno County Superior Court on June 18, ending a serial rape case that investigators said stretched across five assaults in Fresno and Fresno County over several years. Flores, 56, gave up his right to appeal, making the conviction final and shifting the case from proving guilt to deciding punishment for the women whose lives were upended by the attacks.

The plea mattered because law enforcement had spent years piecing the case together from a cold-case investigation and later DNA and genealogy testing. Authorities said Flores was linked to five separate rape cases involving women in the City of Fresno and throughout Fresno County from 2016 to 2021, and victims reportedly support the plea. With sentencing now scheduled for July 20, the courtroom focus turns to victim impact, public accountability and how much punishment the court will impose.

Investigators said the women were not known to Flores and were approached in public, a detail that deepened fears about how the assaults happened and how long the suspect remained unidentified. Fresno police also said Flores may have other victims who have not come forward, leaving open the possibility that the case is not fully closed even after the guilty plea. The Fresno County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office said the case involved numerous sexual assault charges committed against both adults and children.

Before the plea, the case carried enormous exposure. The sheriff’s office said Flores’s bail had been set at $1.7 million, and officials said he could have faced up to 264 years to life if convicted on the original allegations. ABC30 reported the criminal complaint described 14 felony crimes, including allegations that in two cases Flores abducted women to commit the assaults and that some counts carried knife-use and multiple-victim enhancements.

The investigation has also become a local example of how newer DNA genealogy methods are changing cold-case work in Fresno County. Officials said it was Fresno’s first genealogy-based serial rapist case, building on the Cold Case Sexual Assault Unit formed in 2019. With the guilty plea now final, the remaining questions are how the court will weigh the full scope of harm and whether any additional victims will still come forward before sentencing.