Wake County man gets prison sentence after domestic violence plea deal

Wake County prosecutors dropped 10 of 12 charges against Bobby Joe Ortez, 36, in exchange for a guilty plea that sent the Apex man to prison for a minimum of 26 months and a maximum of 53 months. The deal resolved allegations that he raped and assaulted his wife twice within three months, while also accused of assaulting her again after his release before trial.

The case began in January 2026, when Bobby Ortez, then 35 and living in Apex, was first charged with domestic violence. Warrants later broadened the accusations to include rape and assault against his wife, with one alleged attack coming while he was on pretrial release. By the time the plea was entered, the original 12-count case had been reduced to two charges.

The agreement gave prosecutors a conviction and a fixed prison term without taking the full set of allegations to trial in Wake County Superior Court. That kind of resolution is common in cases built around intimate-partner violence, where the state may decide that a plea is the surest way to secure punishment even when the original accusations are more expansive than the final judgment.

For Wake County, the sentence closes a serious domestic-violence case tied to Apex with a defined prison range and no jury verdict on the broadest claims. Ortez’s guilty plea left the court record with a narrower outcome than the one prosecutors first pursued, and it ended the case with most of the original charges gone.