DNA linking suspect to murder recovered from fingernails of 12-year-old victim

Birdie Lewis talks to press after a judge denies bail to Rene Valentin-Matos who was linked to 2009 murder of Lewis' daughter by DNA evidence.

After waiting for justice for nearly five years , Jahmeshia Conners mother came to court Thursday to see with her own eyes the man accused of violently ending the fifth-graders life.

Rene Valentin-Matos had been extradited from a small town in Minnesota and was making his initial appearance in a Cook County courtroom on charges he raped and strangled the 12-year-old in 2009 and sexually assaulted a 26-year-old woman in 2011, both in Chicago.

Jahmeshias mother, Birdie Lewis, said she never lost hope that her daughters killer would be unmasked.

I knew I was going to get me some justice somehow, some way, she told reporters at the Leighton Criminal Court Building after Valentin-Matos had been ordered held without bail. I kept it in Gods hands, and He finally gave me some justice before Mothers Day. The best Mothers Day I could ever have.

Prosecutors revealed in court that DNA recovered from beneath Jahmeshias fingernails was linked to Valentin-Matos, a transient worker who at the time of the murder lived at the church where the girls family worshipped. Police said Valentin-Matos, a father of three grown children, admitted that he knew the girl, but her mother said Thursday that she didnt recognize him.

Prosecutors also said the second rape victim knew Valentin-Matos from the neighborhood and had asked to stay the night at his residence in the Pilsen neighborhood after she had been evicted from her own home in November 2011. Early the first morning there, Valentin-Matos entered the room where she was sleeping and raped her, said Assistant States Attorney Robert Mack.

Both crimes had gone unsolved until a crucial break last January when DNA indicated that the same man committed both Jahmeshias slaying and the rape of the Pilsen woman. With the help of that woman and the dogged efforts of police detectives, police pinpointed Valentin-Matos as the suspect.

But since he had no felony convictions in his background, investigators had no DNA of his to try to match up. Chicago police, however, tracked him down to tiny Cold Spring, Minn., where he was arrested while shoveling snow at a bakery where he worked part-time.

Authorities obtained court permission in Minnesota to take a DNA swab from his mouth, and the results showed he was responsible for both Jahmeshias murder and rape as well as the second sexual assault, Mack said.

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DNA linking suspect to murder recovered from fingernails of 12-year-old victim