Doctor sentenced to prison three decades after violent rape case
- Dignity 4Patients
- Jan 28
- 3 min read
By Matt Schaffer- 28/01/2026- Fox 19- [Concinnati, USA]- [Frederick Louis Tanzer]
A former Sycamore Township doctor has been sentenced to prison after admitting to raping a woman in Cincinnati more than three decades ago, according to prosecutors.
Frederick Louis Tanzer, 67, was handed the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of making false statements to the FBI regarding a violent rape that occurred in Cincinnati during the late 1980s, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Ohio.
Court documents state that Tanzer broke into the woman’s condominium in Columbia-Tusculum on Aug. 1, 1989, wearing a head-to-toe black Lycra suit, held a knife to the victim’s throat, bound her and repeatedly assaulted her for more than five hours.
The case remained unsolved for decades until the FBI and Cincinnati Police Department made a breakthrough, matching DNA from Tanzer’s coffee to evidence left at the scene in 1989.
Authorities said that Tanzer made false statements to both federal agents and the Cincinnati police when approached about the crimes, including denying having seen the victim the day of the rape.
“Before admitting that he was the man who committed these horrific rapes in 1989, Tanzer lied to the FBI. His DNA confirmed his guilt, and evidence points to Tanzer being a serial rapist,” U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II said in a statement. “Tanzer poses a grave risk to the public and deserves to be in prison not only for his lies but also for the despicable attack he was trying to cover up.”
Federal agents say Tanzer was arrested today and charged with making false statements related to a 1989 rape(U.S. Department of Justice). Tanzer was arrested in December 2024, 29 years after the statute of limitations expired for the 1989 attack, and has remained in custody since.
“The strong investigative work by the Cincinnati Police Department and the FBI led to Frederick Tanzer’s identification and his admission of his heinous crimes,” FBI Cincinnati Special Agent in Charge Jason Cromartie said. “I commend the investigators who never gave up in their pursuit of justice for the victim.”
Prosecutors accused Tanzer of repeated abuse, calling him a “serial sexual predator” in court documents.
“There is evidence that, behind closed doors, he continued his pattern of sexual violence against the women in his life—that he secretly, and repeatedly, drugged both his current wife and his ex-wife to the point of blacking out, and that he then had sex with them without their consent,” prosecutors said.
In the decades before his arrest, Tanzer practiced medicine in Ohio, Kansas and Colorado.
“In the thirty-five years between that brutal attack and today, Tanzer went back to his life, hiding behind the prestige and authority of a white doctor’s coat. But, as the horrifying circumstances of his rape of the victim suggest, he was not a one-time offender,” federal prosecutors wrote in a court motion.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article and were abused in state run medical and health facilities, you can contact Dignity4Patients, whose helpline is open Monday to Thursday, 10am to 4pm.
Dignity4Patients Commentary: This case may be framed as evidence that justice ultimately prevails. It is impossible to ignore the harsh truth that Tanzer exploited the automatic trust granted to medical professionals to evade scrutiny and accountability. For decades, position of power functioned as a shield, allowing him to evade real consequences while the survivor sought justice. This case serves as a sharp reminder of how power, status, and time can work together to protect perpetrators far longer than they ever protect victims.
