Investigators Connect Suspects to Multiple Victims
By Simone Weichselbaum, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Two men who have raped at least 10 women in the city are wondering around freely, while Philadelphia police investigate to find out who they are.
Through science, investigators have connected these men to multiple victims each. Police don’t have the rapists’ names, consistent descriptions or any other identifying factors other than their DNA, stored in rape kits collected after the attacks.
But since September, a 14-year-old FBI national DNA matching database has been in place at the city’s new $15 million forensic lab, on 8th Street near Poplar, allowing authorities to link the two unknown men to a string of victims attacked over a period of two years.
The next step is to figure out who the rapists are, cops said.
“We can look at cases as an accumulation of information rather than as an independent case,” said Capt. John Darby of the Special Victims Unit. Investigators avoid calling the two attackers “suspects.” Instead Darby refers to the cases as “patterns” because of the assaults connected to the men’s genetic profile stored in the FBI database known as the Combined DNA Index Sysytem.
Investigators released the first batch of matches in late September and deduced from the eight crime scenes connected to one mystery man’s genetic profile that he went after women engaged in “high risk” behavior, Darby said.
The man Darby described as a thin black man in his 30s, between 5 feet 8 inches and 6 feet tall started his attack binge in 2002. He sexually assaulted his eighth victim on Feb. 15 in South Philadelphia by holding her captive in an abandoned house for two days.
The second pattern Darby released involved a man with a penchant for teenagers in the eastern part of the city.
The first attack occurred on Nov. 13, 2003, when a man walked up to a 13-year-old girl near Cumberland Street and Kensington Avenue, Kensington, about 5 p.m., police said, told her his name was “Troy” or “Tony,” pointed a black revolver in her stomach and forced her into a junk yard on Lee Street near Front and raped her, police said.
The girl described her attacker as a black male, 25 to 30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall, medium build with a full beard and mustache, police said.
Then, four months later, the man drove up to a 16-year-old girl who was waiting for a bus at 2nd Street and Girard Avenue about 8:45 p.m., police said.
Again, calling himself “Tone,” the man pointed a handgun at the teen, forced her into the car, and drove her across Broad Street to the area of Cameron Street near Francis in North Philadelphia, police said.
He raped her in his light blue, two-door vehicle, which has a manual transmission and dark interior, then pushed her out and sped away, police said.
The second victim described the man with different features than the first girl, police said. The teen said her attacker was a black male, early 20s, 5 feet 7 inches to 5 feet 8 inches tall, full beard and mustache and around 150 pounds.
Since the girls gave different details about their attackers, police did not know the two rapes were linked until the FBI database linked DNA from both crimes to the same suspect.
“Now we have a basis of information,” Darby said about the system. “The problem prior to DNA linkage is isolated cases that run into dead ends.”
The CODIS software is designed to help investigators track down unknown criminals after DNA is recovered at a crime scene.
Forensic scientists can extract an unknown attacker’s genetic code from chewing gum, stamps, doorknobs and an array of other household items as well as bodily fluids.
After the genetic material is recovered, lab workers place the DNA into a special gel where they scan into a computer and identify a person’s genetic profile, lab officials said.
Then they run the analysis through the city, state and then national levels of CODIS, under the Forensic and Offender Indexes, which contains thousands of profiles of unknown criminals’ DNA recovered at crime scenes and the genetic identities of prison inmates, lab officials said.
Since Philadelphia police signed onto CODIS, becoming one of about 175 local labs in a 50-state system that holds around 2 million genetic samples, forensic scientist Kevin Knox said his colleagues unearthed about 15 hits. Knox described a “hit” as a match of an unknown suspect’s DNA to that of an inmate or linking a nameless criminal to genetic material found at crime scenes.
“As a scientist it is exciting to see this,” said Knox. “It expands on the capability to solve crimes.”
The whole process - extracting DNA from bodily fluid or a piece of material, placing it in the special gel to read a person’s genetic profile, sending it through CODIS and compiling a report on its findings - takes about two to three weeks, Knox said.
But the city’s heavy backlog means it can take about six weeks for scientists to begin analyzing evidence for DNA in a stranger-rape investigation, according to Charles Brennan, deputy commissioner for science and technology.
If a high-profile case comes across the table, investigators can decide to bump it up to the top of the processing list, Brennan said, adding they moved up the analysis for Brian McCutcheon, the homeless man arrested in February for raping and nearly killing an 8-year-old in a Center City library bathroom stall.
Because of the wait for analyzing biological evidence, police said they sometimes partner with private out-of-state labs to process genetic material. A Virginia lab processed the two cases Darby publicized last month.
Although science helped police realize that the 10 sexual assaults were not independent crimes but the actions of two serial rapists, investigators are still calling on the public to assist them in figuring out who the two men are.