Rape, kidnapping charges dropped against St. Paul man accused of chaining victim in basement

The Ramsey County attorney's office has dropped rape and kidnapping charges against a St. Paul man who had been accused of chaining a man in his basement and assaulting him over four days.

Wilbert Glover, 56, still faces charges of illegal possession of a firearm by a felon and illegal possession of ammunition by a felon that stem from the same case.

"Due to significant evidentiary issues, we dismissed counts one and two against Wilbert Glover as we no longer believe that we could prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt," Ramsey County Attorney spokesman Dennis Gerhardstein said after Glover's hearing Thursday.

Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Cory Tennison said that the county was dropping kidnapping and first-degree criminal sexual conduct charges because the victim in the case was uncooperative, and because he once had a relationship with Glover.

"Everything was not quite as it seems," Tennison said of the initial evidence.

Tennison said that he has tried to contact the victim multiple times.

"He refuses to meet with us," Tennison said, adding that the reluctance makes it difficult to prosecute the two most serious charges.

The charges filed against Glover last November gave this account: A 19-year-old man was walking in north Minneapolis on a Friday night when someone came up behind him and strangled him until he passed out. He awoke blindfolded and bound, and was Maced when he removed the blindfold.

The man told police that his attacker, an older man whom he heard speaking but never saw, repeatedly raped him for days.

The man escaped his attacker's home four days later when the kidnapper left. He pulled on his chains to free himself from a wall, cut power to the house by switching off the circuit breakers and broke out a bathroom window by smashing it with a fire extinguisher.

The man ran to a neighbor's home for help. The neighbor said that the man had a handcuff on one wrist and shackles on his ankles, carried a chain and a fire extinguisher, and had bruises on his wrists and a raised red line around his neck.