8/10/2019 DNA links serial rapist to S. California killings | Recordnet.com

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8/10/2019 DNA links serial rapist to S. California killings | Recordnet.com

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9/8/13 1:3NA links serial rapist to S. California killings | Recordnet.com

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if the dishes broke.

He is believed to have raped two

Concord women, a San Ramon woman and a Danville woman between October and December

of 1978. The rapes terrorized the East Bay and a multiagency task force was

formed, devoting 16 full-time investigators to solving the serial rapes.

''We really put a lot into it,''

said Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren Rupf, who was a captain in investigationsat the time. ''There are some crimes that strike to the heart of what scares

all of us more than others. The victims were all asleep in their homes. How

more vulnerable could you be? This guy would strike again, coming back to the

same neighborhoods.''

Although the DNA link to the Southern

California cases is exciting to investigators and criminalists, the statute

of limitations on the Contra Costa County rapes expired long ago -- in the mid

1980s. But information in old case files may help Southern California detectives

find the killer, since the statute of limitations for murder never expires.

Frank Fitzpatrick, director of the

Orange County Crime Lab, said the DNA profile of the rapist/killer was submitted

to the state's DNA database, but no match was found. The database contains DNA

samples from more than 130,000 convicts.

DNA can be plucked from a pinhead

of blood, a strand of hair, a drop of semen or saliva.

State law calls for DNA samples

from everyone convicted of rape, murder, attempted murder, voluntary manslaughter,

domestic violence, kidnapping, child molestation, mayhem or torture.

(End of published text

In the past, DNA profiles could

be narrowed down to fit one person in a million, but advances over the past

year now allow criminalists to narrow a profile down to fit one person in a

quadrillion or quintillion.