Full Notification

On Monday, Sept. 14, the U.S. Marshals Service-Violent Offender Task Force, in Asheville, arrested 53-year-old Mark Allen Rawson in Marion. Rawson was wanted in Texas for failing to register as a sex offender, under the Adam Walsh Act.
Rawson was also wanted in Colorado for two counts of felony probation violation. Rawson was on state probation in Colorado for sexual exploitation of a minor prior to absconding in 2011.
The U.S. Marshals Service, in Western Texas, found that Rawson had assumed the identity of his deceased brother, Robert Charles Rawson, after absconding from his probation in Colorado.
During the investigation, it was determined that Robert Charles Rawson died in 1974, during a tragic fire in Phoenix, Ariz. Mark Rawson was found to have had traveled to Texas and Tennessee and acquired a driver’s license in his brother’s name.
It wasn’t until Mark Rawson was issued a citation by a N.C. Highway Patrol trooper in his brother’s name that put him on the radar in Marion. It was later discovered that Mark Rawson was working in North Carolina, using his brother’s name, for approximately one year.
The investigation led the U.S. Marshals to 115 6th EM Street in Marion, where Rawson was located and arrested.
Members of the Marion Police Department and McDowell County Sheriff’s Office, along with Homeland Security Investigations, assisted the U.S. Marshals Service-Violent Offender Task Force with Mark Rawson’s arrest.
He was transported to the McDowell County jail, pending his extradition hearings in U.S. Magistrate Court in Asheville.