The Associated Press
HOUSTON (AP) -- A registered sex offender was charged with strangling three girls and a woman between 1986 and 1995 after previously untested DNA evidence was sent to a private lab.
Anthony Allen Shore was arrested Friday and charged Monday with four counts of capital murder. Three of the victims had been sexually assaulted. The 41-year-old tow-truck driver remained in jail Tuesday.
Shore was arrested after DNA evidence linked him to the 1992 slaying of 21-year-old Maria Del Carmen Estrada in Houston, detectives said. Estrada last was seen when she left her home to walk to work.
Several weeks ago, detectives decided to apply new DNA technology to old samples and sent evidence in the Estrada case that had not previously been tested to a private lab in Dallas, police Capt. Richard Holland said. The Houston police department’s troubled lab was shut down last year.
The DNA matched that of Shore, a registered sex offender on probation for sexually assaulting two female relatives, and he was arrested, police said. Authorities had his DNA from the earlier assault cases.
“He acted as if he knew what was up,-- homicide Sgt. John Swaim said. “He knew his DNA was in the system, and eventually he would get caught.--
Upon his arrest, detectives said Shore confessed to killing Estrada, whose body, nude from the waist down, was found in the drive-through lane of a Dairy Queen.
They said he also said he killed 9-year-old Diana Rebollar, who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed in 1994; Dana Sanchez, 16, whose body was found in 1995 after she never arrived at her boyfriend’s house; and 15-year-old Laurie Lee Tremblay, found dead in 1986 after disappearing on her way to catch a bus. Tremblay was the only victim who was not sexually assaulted.
Shore has been a registered sex offender since 1998. He was sentenced to eight years of probation for sexual assaults on two relatives, ages 11 and 13, Swaim said.
Shore’s wife was unaware of her husband’s alleged connections to the slayings, Swaim said.