DNA database solves 1996 rape: Prosecutors

NYC Crime

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, March 31, 2014, 3:57 PM

A convicted sexual predator has been tied to a sickening attack where he allegedly raped a Queens woman in front of her husband nearly 18 years ago prosecutors announced Monday.

A DNA match has allegedly linked Richard Thomas, 47, to the July 1996 attack against a Far Rockaway woman who woke up to see a masked man armed with a gun standing in her bedroom.

He told her husband not to look at him or he would "blow his head off" then raped the wife on the floor, prosecutors charged.

Thomas is serving his fourth year of a 50-year sentence for unrelated sex assaults on a 12-year-old girl in 2004 and on a woman in 1996 cases that were also solved through the DNA database.

He was connected to the latest allegation by a district attorney's initiative that combs through unsolved sex assaults in Queens. It analyzed a previously untested rug and t-shirt Thomas is accused of using to clean himself, leading to an identification.

The cold case taskforce, which started working nearly two years ago, has led to indictments against 13 unnamed individuals, referred to as John Does until they're apprehended, plus three named defendants, said Queens DA Richard Brown.

More:
DNA database solves 1996 rape: Prosecutors