On Monday, lawmakers in Genesee County, Michigan agreed to spend between $15,000 to $20,000 digitizing nearly 500 videotapes found in a suspected serial rapist's home. Authorities are having to digitize the tapes in order to see if Gilbert Conway was responsible for rapes that occurred decades ago, NBC News reported.
Conway was arrested in July for six sexual assaults that took place between 2009 and 2018. He's not guilty to 77 counts, some of which include first-degree criminal sexual assault and kidnapping.
"We believe he video tapes the sex assaults while he commits them. Once we view them, we are going to try and identify additional victims. We're going to try to reach out to those victims if we can identify them and were going to try and take statements from them and see that they were victimized," Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton told WEYI-TV.
"Each one of those hi8 tapes runs at least eight hours," Leyton told WRJT-TV. "We believe from looking at some of the hi8 tapes that there are additional victims being sexually assaulted while being videotaped and we want to be able to look at those video tapes and hopefully identify these additional victims."
Because of the number of potential victims, which could date back to the early 90s, police are asking anyone who believes they may be a victim to step forward.
Conway's lawyer, Archie Hayman, said he has not yet seen anything on the videotapes.
"As far as I know, Mr. Conway appears to be have been a hard-working individual with years of employment and a loving family man," Hayman told NBC News.
The FBI will work with local law enforcement to review the footage once it's all digitized.
If convicted, Conway could face life in prison.