EADS, Tenn. — A Shelby County businessman arrested Monday for selling drugs is now charged with two counts of aggravated rape.
He was being held on a $1,000,000 bond, but that has since been reduced to $150,000.
Deputies raided the estate of Mark Giannini Monday and found prescription pills and dozens of guns.
Gianinni is the founder and former CEO of Service Assurance, a computer and information technology company which he sold to Konica-Minolta.
The rape charges were added Wednesday.
A woman told police she informed a friend she was looking for extra employment.
The friend reportedly told Giannini, who the victim said showed up at her job June 17 and told her he needed a house cleaner and office help.
The woman said she called Giannini June 19 and said she was interested in some work, at which time he told her he would pick her up.
Once they arrived at his home, the woman said Giannini gave her an orange colored drink, and as she walked around, she became uncomfortable and said she wanted to go home. She said she saw strange things in the house, like a skeleton hanging in the den.
In an affidavit, the woman said Giannini grabbed her saying, “No you are not,” and raped her over a three hour period on top of an American flag towel.
Later, deputies say an employee of Giannini took the woman to a Motel 6. Her family found her at the hotel and took her to the hospital.
The woman’s family said she, “was in a mentally altered state and in and out of consciousness.”
Staff at Baptist Hospital said she was foaming at the mouth with, “similar medical conditions to a seizure or overdose.”
When investigators searched Giannini’s home they found the American flag towel, the clothes the woman said she was wearing as well as other items she described.
Deputies said they found more than $16,000 in cash, a variety of prescription drugs with no labels on the bottles and 24 guns when they searched Giannini’s property.
Deputies said Gianinni escaped from the house, but later came out of the woods, sweaty and scratched up with Viagra, an expired Desoto County Sheriff’s ID and badge, a passport, and about $1,600 in his pocket.
They locked him up for selling controlled substances, which is a felony, and that led to more charges because he had guns in his house.
He bonded out Tuesday, and WREG snapped some pictures as he arrived home.
He was arrested again Wednesday for the aggravated rape charges.
Gianinni is a national speaker and published author, not someone neighbors expected to end up at 201 Poplar.
