This is the second in a two-part daily series on the use of DNA evidence in criminal investigations. You can see the first installment of the series here.
The recent arrests of two Charlottesville rape suspects and a rape conviction in April were made possible by DNA evidence alone.
The Aug. 26, 1999 rape of a female University student in her 17th Street home still haunts the minds of many University students. While she was raped, her male friend was forced to remain in the room.
Commonwealth Attorney Dave Chapman, who successfully prosecuted the attacker, Charlottesville resident Montaret Davis, described DNA evidence as "indispensable" in this case "because neither victim was able to identify the perpetrator and he was only located on DNA evidence."
Davis left traces of his DNA on the victim's bed sheets as well as on a can of beer, which he drank while talking to the victim after the rape.
Charlottesville Police Lt. Chip Harding, who fed the samples from the rape into the state's DNA databank, described the day he learned Davis was a genetic match as "the most exciting moment in my 23-year career because I had gotten to know the victim and her family.
"Without DNA [Davis] would be back on the streets in Charlottesville, probably as a sexual predator," Harding said, stressing the essential nature of the scientific evidence in prosecuting the case.
The investigation's history prior to the match shows the importance of DNA in bringing the case to a close.
"We had a suspect list of probably 40 people that had a history [as sex offenders] and Montaret Davis never made our list, so we never would've focused on him," Harding said.
With the DNA identification, police were able to charge Davis with the rape on Oct. 5, 1999. Following an emotional, week-long trial last April, a jury found Davis guilty of rape, robbery, forcible sodomy, forcible object sexual penetration and two counts of abduction. The jury recommended a sentence of 90 years in prison.
But DNA technology cannot help police nab a suspect if no victim comes forward.
Harding stressed the importance of the victim cooperating in the case.
"I really admire her for coming forward," he said. "She should be viewed by U.Va. students as a hero."
In addition to the Davis conviction, University Police Chief Michael Sheffield said he attributes the Aug. 28 arrest of Shannon Leo Malnowski for two rapes and an attempted rape to the identification power of DNA.
Malnowski is currently being held on two counts of rape and forcible sodomy.
He is charged with a July 28 rape of a local woman at the Charlottesville High School track, a July 24, 1997 rape of a 78-year-old woman on Culbreth Road and a Nov. 30, 1996 attack of a University student on Cemetery Drive. Malnowski also is charged with indecent exposure from a June 16 incident that took place outside Ruffner Hall.
In all three cases, victims were walking or jogging in the early morning and attacked from behind.
The police were able to collect DNA evidence from each of the assaults but were unable to identify an assailant until the June 16 incident.
There they retrieved DNA from a T-shirt left at the scene and had an eyewitness identification of the perpetrator.
"We had a suspect [in the indecent exposure case], which was good. We submitted the DNA evidence to the lab and we got a hit," Charlottesville Police Chief J.W. "Buddy" Rittenhouse said.
"It was just absolutely the one thing we needed to connect all three cases" and charge Malnowski with the rapes, Rittenhouse said.
University Police Det. Kim Pugh also said DNA was "the most important evidence in that case."
"We had no idea who the perpetrators were in the '96 and '97 cases and DNA is what gave us the name," Pugh said.
In a University student rape case police once considered unsolvable, DNA led police all the way back to 1977 when a man was convicted of murder in Sussex County.
Calvin Lorenzo Perry went to prison in 1977 for a Sussex County shooting that left one woman dead from a gunshot wound under her ear.
Perry was paroled in 1991 and returned to jail in December 1993 after pleading guilty to a May 1993 theft of a Charlottesville lawn care store on Garrett Street.
During his time in prison, officials took a DNA sample and put in the state-wide databank.
Perry's DNA sample matched DNA samples from a 1993 University student rape case, when a female University student was raped near Lambeth Field Apartments on April 16, 1993.
Her knife-wielding assailant grabbed her in the University Hall parking lot and dragged her across Emmet Street where he then raped her.
The case stalled for years, but when the DNA samples matched, police reopened the seven-year-old rape case and pointed to Perry as the alleged attacker.
Police were not able to identify a suspect in the rape until a "cold hit" was found in the databank.
Asst. Commonwealth Attorney Ronald M. Huber, who declined to comment on the specifics of the case, said some cases "just go unsolved [without DNA evidence], so there's not even an arrest unless there's a hit" in the databank.
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