DNA gives break in 1992 rape case

Santa Fe police may be on the verge of solving a two-decades-old rape case after matching a DNA sample that had been stored in a police department refrigerator since 1992 with that of a suspect whose DNA sample is in a national FBI database.

This is the second case we have been able to solve (with old DNA samples) we are calling them the freezer cases, police spokeswoman Celina Westervelt said Thursday. The other one was also a rape case and that suspect is being extradited from Missouri.

No one has been arrested in the 1992 case at this point. But court documents show that DNA collected when the victim, then a 16-year-old girl, underwent a hospital exam just after her sexual assault has been matched with that of a 51-year-old Santa Fe man.

He was required to give a new DNA sample via oral swabs on Dec. 30. He has not been charged with the rape at this point.

The Journal is not naming him in this news story because his has not yet been charged in the rape case.

Court records show he pleaded guilty to several counts of fraud and embezzlement from 1997. Neither the suspect nor his attorney from the 1997 case could not be reached for comment Thursday.

According to Westervelt, the SFPDs Crimes Against Persons Unit, working in batches, has been taking more than 100 items of old evidence including hair, blood and clothing samples from their icebox to the state crime lab to see if newly developed touch DNA techniques, nonexistent until recently, can now solve so-called cold cases.

Those techniques can reveal miniscule traces of DNA, for example those left when someone briefly touches a glass or a weapon.

Before you couldnt do anything with it because there wasnt enough of a DNA sample, said Westervelt. DNA is an acid in the bodys cells that carries a genetic code unique to every individual.

One of the prime goals of analyzing the old samples was to solve the murder-rape cases of Susan LaPorte in Santa Fe in December 1985 and the killing of Maria Padilla five months later in Albuquerques South Valley, said Westervelt.

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DNA gives break in 1992 rape case