A 59-year-old St. Paul man was sentenced to 17 years in prison Friday for committing two rapes about 12 years apart, the latest one while he was on probation for a 2019 sexual assault.
Thao Xiong, shown in January 2025 (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
In January, Thao Xiong was charged in Ramsey County District Court with raping a 71-year-old St. Paul woman he met on Facebook. At the time of the offense, he was on probation for raping a 41-year-old woman six years earlier in St. Paul.
But he had a longtime secret, which came out in March through his DNA: He raped a woman at a Maplewood motel in 2013.
In July, Xiong pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct in connection with the 2013 assault and an amended charge of third-degree criminal sexual conduct in the January case.
“These are separate instances, many years between each other,” Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Andrew Johnson said at sentencing. “There are separate victims, and they absolutely deserve their own separate sentence.”
Judge Kellie Charles followed a plea agreement Xiong reached with the prosecution, giving him 13- and four-year sentences, to be served consecutively. He received credit for 399 days already served in custody.
After incarceration, he will be on lifetime conditional release and must register as a predatory offender.
2019 sexual assault
Xiong was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct in Ramsey County in July 2019.
Witnesses told police that a group of acquaintances had been drinking at Xiong’s St. Paul apartment and that a 41-year-old woman became drunk and ended up in his bed, the criminal complaint says. A witness later looked in the bedroom and saw Xiong on top of the woman, who was naked from the waist down.
She “finally escaped” to a different apartment, while still partially naked, the complaint says. She had scratches and bruises on her inner thighs, neck, shoulder, legs and arms.
Xiong reached a plea deal with prosecutors in February 2020 and admitted to fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct in exchange for the more serious charge being dismissed. He was sentenced to 231 days in jail, which was time that he had already served after his arrest, and put on supervised probation for 10 years.
January sexual assault
Police were dispatched to the 71-year-old woman’s apartment in St. Paul’s Summit-University neighborhood Jan. 28 after she reported she had just been forcefully sexually assaulted by a man, who was later identified as Xiong, the complaint says.
She told police someone must have given Xiong her phone number because he called, asking to meet. She agreed, and invited him over.
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When he entered the apartment, she told police, he pushed her into her bedroom, took off her clothes and raped her.
Xiong then left the apartment, although she was able to get a photograph of him, which she gave to police. She said he left in a black Jeep and gave police his license plate information.
The woman was taken to the hospital where she underwent a sexual assault examination. During the exam, she said Xiong had befriended her on Facebook a day before the assault.
Medical records show the woman was injured during the assault, and forensic samples were collected for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to analyze.
After his arrest, Xiong underwent a suspect sexual assault examination. While waiting to be booked into jail, he “spontaneously” said this was the second person who accused him of rape, the complaint says.
DNA match
According to the May complaint, a woman reported to police on July 15, 2013, that she had just been sexually assaulted at a motel off U.S. 61 in Maplewood by a man she knew as “Chue Lee,” identified in November 2020 through a DNA match as Xiong.
The woman said she had been talking with “Chue” for two days over the phone, that she did not know him previously and had assumed he got her number from someone she knew.
She said he called her on July 15 and said he was coming to Minnesota from Wisconsin and wanted her to show him around. They met in the parking lot of a St. Paul grocery store, where he suggested they get something to eat. Rather than going to a restaurant, he brought her to the motel, saying he wanted to get some rest before eating.
Xiong rented the room and once inside, locked the door and began “ripping her clothes apart,” the complaint says. She said he “overpowered” her and raped her.
She went to a hospital for a sexual assault examination the same day. A nurse examiner noted bruising to the woman’s body and she complained about areas where she said Xiong had bitten her.
The complaint says motel video shows Xiong arriving with the woman in a Toyota Prius, and leaving 45 minutes later.
An investigator in late July 2020 discovered the sexual assault kit, which had not been tested. It was brought to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and four months later an unidentified male DNA profile taken from swabs of the woman was entered into the state’s DNA databases and the National DNA Index System.
The BCA notified St. Paul police on Nov. 4, 2020, that Xiong’s DNA, obtained from his 2019 sexual assault case, matched the DNA in the 2013 assault. Police tried to contact the woman but were unsuccessful, the complaint says.
Last March, police were told DNA collected from Xiong in the January case matched the DNA found on the swabs taken from the 2013 victim, the complaint says.
Police again tried to reach the woman and were successful on April 10 after her son called to ask why they were trying to contact his mother who does not speak English. She told police through an interpreter she “had been waiting for a very long time for an update on her case and wants him prosecuted for sexually assaulting her,” the complaint says.
‘It was not my fault’
At sentencing, prosecutor Johnson told the judge that Xiong’s 2013 victim did not want to submit an impact statement. Johnson said she asked him to convey that shortly after the incident, she had a small stroke that she believed was due to stress from the sexual assault.
Johnson then read a statement from Xiong’s latest victim, who said she was still afraid of Xiong and wondered why he targeted her. “I never met him before, and do not understand why this happened,” she wrote.
Over time, she wrote, “I have come to see that it was not my fault.”
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