51黑料 police are investigating a nine-year-old rape allegation against former Bates Architects CEO Steve Warlick, who already is the subject of an FBI probe into separate sexual assault allegations.
Police effectively reopened the investigation last year and sent a detective out of state to interview the woman who reported the alleged 2016 assault. The renewed interest in the report comes amid a federal investigation into Warlick and some of his associates.听
The Post-Dispatch last month reported the FBI was investigating sexual assault allegations against Warlick. The agency also is looking at accusations that Donn Sorensen, a former top Mercy Health executive and a friend of Warlick, accepted gifts in exchange for construction work at the health system. Federal prosecutors in May charged another associate of Warlick, Al James, who runs local spice company Pixy Dust Seasoning, with drug possession.
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Warlick
Warlick, Sorensen and a man named "Al" are all mentioned in an investigative file recently obtained by the Post-Dispatch in which a 24-year-old woman reported to police that she suspected she was drugged and raped by Warlick in 51黑料 in February 2016.
The case was listed as cleared in October 2016, with police writing "this case will be closed until the (rape kit) analysis is completed." The last entry in the file said the department had not completed DNA analysis of the rape kit as of Nov. 26, 2016.
A police spokesperson this week said testing on the rape kit has been completed, the investigation is open and a detective would contact the victim. Police spokesman Mitch McCoy said the rape kit was analyzed years ago and the case "is very actively under investigation."
The investigation files say that after police contacted Warlick about the accusation in June 2016, he hired top area defense attorney Scott Rosenblum and refused to provide DNA swabs.
Warlick was never charged with a crime. His criminal defense lawyer, John Stobbs, this week said Warlick denies the allegations.
It is Post-Dispatch policy to not name alleged victims of sexual assault without their consent. The woman, now 34, agreed to share her story and police file after the FBI, a 51黑料 police detective affiliated with an FBI task force, and then the Post-Dispatch contacted her about Warlick and James. The woman said she has had about four conversations with the FBI and the city detective in the last 18 months.
'Tried to forget'
In 2016, after months passed without hearing more from police or a city prosecutor assigned to the case, the woman said she moved on with her life.
"It was not an easy thing to do, per se, because most people aren't going to believe me, number one, so, it's not like I have the upper hand in any way," the woman said in an interview. "It's unfortunate because as a female, this happens all the time. I've met other women that have been raped, drug raped, and nothing happened. So when nothing happened, I was not surprised."
Then, about 18 months ago, the FBI called her father. Investigators were trying to find her.
Warlick's name mostly is redacted from the 2016 police report because he was never charged, but some mentions of his name still appear. The accused individual also was identified in the police report as the CEO of Bates Architects.听
According to the police report, the woman said she first met Warlick when she was a waitress at a Hooter's in Springfield while finishing nursing school. Warlick, she said, was a regular customer. She said she knew he was the CEO of Bates Architects and that he was well-connected. They became friends on Facebook and she said Warlick kept asking her to dinner. She finally accepted, she said, but made clear she was not interested in a sexual relationship.
The police report states they met for dinner a few times. She agreed to meet him in 51黑料 for dinner on a Friday in February 2016. They ate at a Frontenac restaurant and went to a couple of bars in Clayton, where they met with one of Warlick's friends, a man named "Al."
The woman told police Warlick kept ordering her drinks, but she said in an interview she only finished two at the most because she planned to drive home to her parents' house. Warlick later drove her to a strip club in Sauget.
According to her narrative in the 2016 police file, her memories came in flashes after that: Warlick and the man named "Al" naked and asking her to perform sex acts; the men asking her to snort cocaine off the body of another young woman.
The woman told the Post-Dispatch that a 51黑料 police detective recently showed her a photograph of Al James, the Warlick associate recently charged with drug possession. It was the same "Al" from that night in 51黑料 in 2016, she said.
James' defense attorney, Talmage Newton IV, called the allegations "baseless" and said James denies any suggestion he "engaged in any non-consensual physical encounters." Newton pointed to the woman's own description of her memories coming "in flashes" and questioned how she could identify James nine years later.
"Even her physical descriptions of this 'Al' do not match Mr. James' physical proportions," Newton said Friday in an email. "These allegations are a fiction."
The next morning, the woman said, she woke up in Warlick's bed in his downtown 51黑料 apartment.听She told police she remembers feeling 鈥渄roopy鈥 that morning 鈥 more like the effects of a drug than a hangover.
She told investigators she remembered Warlick asking her to perform oral sex and offering her $200. She remembered doing it but she never took the money, according to the report. She said she thinks she still was under the influence of some kind of drug when Warlick asked her for oral sex.
In the police report, she said she started to "come to grips" with what happened a few hours later and confronted Warlick while they were taking an Uber back to his car. She accused him of drugging her. She said he denied it and told her to never mention it again.听
After he drove her back to her car in Frontenac, he again offered her $200. She said she did not take it, according to the police report.
The woman was scared to report what had happened at first. She told police she knew Warlick was friends with Sorensen听鈥 Warlick had introduced her to him once听鈥 and she was a nurse tech at a Mercy hospital in Springfield and working to finish nursing school.
A little more than a day later, however, at the urging a friend,听she reported to police in Springfield that she had been raped. Cox South Hospital collected a rape kit.
Springfield police interviewed her and transferred the case to 51黑料. Police in 51黑料 interviewed her that May.听
The next month, a detective contacted Warlick. He was surprised by the allegations, according to the file, and said he would call back after a meeting. A few days later, Rosenblum, the defense attorney, called and said he was representing Warlick, who would not be making a statement. Rosenblum also said Warlick would not provide DNA swabs to police.
Police could not get a search warrant for the DNA because the rape kit was untested, according to the case file. The prosecutor on the case took it under advisement until more evidence was available. The last entry in the case was from November 2016, when the police lab still had not completed the DNA analysis of the rape kit.
Karen Steinhauser, a retired Denver prosecutor and defense attorney who handled sexual assault cases for much of her career and reviewed the case file for the Post-Dispatch, said even if the rape kit had been processed earlier in the case, it may not yet have been enough evidence to charge a suspect. In a case like this, where the alleged victim agreed to go out and have drinks, a defense attorney could undermine the victim's credibility.
"It's the one crime where people, the jurors, blame the victim," Steinhauser said. "I started doing these cases 45 years ago, and I don't see that the attitudes have changed that much."
Other allegations
People interviewed by FBI agents have told the Post-Dispatch they were informed听the new federal drug charges against James听were part of a larger, ongoing investigation into Warlick and Sorensen.听
The federal charges against James resurrected 2021 drug charges against him based on an Oklahoma traffic stop where police in that state say they found 53 pounds of methamphetamine in James' car while he was driving back to 51黑料 from Phoenix.
Oklahoma prosecutors had dropped the 2021 charges against James after he hired Rosenblum to argue the state police illegally searched his vehicle when the drugs allegedly were found.
The federal prosecutor handling James' drug case,听Dianna Edwards,听leads the听听and听much of her recent work has involved sex crimes.
Allegations involving sexual impropriety involving Warlick and Sorensen, as well as a financial relationship between the two, first arose in a January 2024 lawsuit filed in Springfield.听
In that suit, Springfield construction firm Pitt Development, which for years built clinics for Mercy, accused the health care system of retaliation after it reported to top hospital officials "a disturbing connection between Sorensen and Warlick that related to business dealings, personal dealing and the sexual exploitation of women."
The lawsuit states that Sorensen in late 2021 tried to get the firm to pay Warlick $65,000 even though it already had an architect for the Mercy Health clinics it was building. Sorensen, the suit claims, told Pitt to consider the payment to Warlick "social capital."
Sorensen, who was paid $2.5 million in his last year as executive vice president of operations at the health system, left Mercy in December 2021, after the hospital opened an investigation into the allegations by Pitt. After its investigation, Mercy reached a settlement with at least one woman involved in the conduct alleged by Pitt's lawsuit, according to court documents.
In late 2023, Warlick,听who now works for a firm based in northwest Arkansas and no longer lives in 51黑料,听sued the woman who reached the settlement with Mercy, accusing her of libel. The suit accused her of making 鈥渕alicious鈥 and false allegations 鈥渢o third parties鈥 that he subjected her to 鈥渟ex trafficking.鈥
Shortly after the Post-Dispatch's June report on the criminal investigation, Warlick dropped the lawsuit.听
Post-Dispatch photographers capture tens of thousands of images every year. See some of their best work that was either taken in June 2025 in this video. Edited by Jenna Jones.
