The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES- A man was charged in a 12-year-old slaying and sexual assault after police linked the crime to his DNA in a statewide felon database established by a recent voter initiative, authorities said.
Charles Augustus Jones, 41, also is suspected in a 1995 New Orleans rape on the basis of the DNA record, police said.
Jones was among the first arrested statewide using the database of convicted felons established by Proposition 69, which was passed last November.
He was charged with capital murder Friday, accused of killing Mara Robinson, 34, whose body was discovered in a restroom at a carwash in South Los Angeles on June 9, 1993.
At the time, police had little to go on except DNA evidence, said Detective Vivian Flores of the Police Department’s cold-case homicide unit.
But detectives recently revived Robinson’s case and got a break when they fed the DNA profile into state and federal databases and got a link to Jones, who had a record of mostly drug-related convictions in California and Louisiana.
New Orleans police later said they linked Jones to the unsolved 1995 rape of a 38-year-old woman, who survived, according to the LAPD.
“This is a great thing that voters passed,” said Flores. “There are a lot of guys in custody now who are sweating.”
All of California’s 162,000 prison inmates must contribute samples to the DNA database. As of the end of March, samples had been collected from about 94,000 of them, said Margot Bach, a state Department of Corrections spokeswoman.
Before Proposition 69, only inmates convicted of serious felonies _ such as murder, rape and kidnapping _ were required to provide genetic material upon release.
Jones’ DNA was cataloged before his release on a drug conviction earlier this year, police said.