DNA Links Hubbard to La Jolla Rape : Crime: Sources say the former police officer, who is accused of a series of beach attacks, is the main suspect, but he has not been charged.

Former San Diego Police Officer Henry Hubbard Jr., who has been charged with 35 felony counts stemming from a series of beach attacks last summer, is the main suspect in a 1990 attack in La Jolla, where a young woman was sexually assaulted, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

Independent sources familiar with the investigation said that Hubbard, 29, was tied to the assault through preliminary DNA test results. The sources, who asked not to be identified, said the attack occurred in September, 1990.

The victim was 18, and the attack occurred during a “hot prowl” burglary of a house in La Jolla, sources said.

Hubbard has not been charged in the incident.

A source familiar with a police report of the incident said the attack occurred late at night. The source said the young woman was raped while her family and a visiting relative slept in other areas of the house.

Witnesses told police investigators they saw a police car in the area at the time of the rape, the source said.

The La Jolla attack differs sharply from most of the eight other assaults with which Hubbard is charged.

Investigators said those attacks occurred between June 15 and Aug. 15, and have led to multiple counts of attempted murder, attempted robbery, kidnaping, rape and sexual assault filed against Hubbard last week by a special grand jury.

The grand jury indictment alleges that Hubbard also raped two girls, 13 and 14 years old, on the night of July 20. In addition, he is charged with kidnaping, raping, robbing and sexually assaulting seven more women. He is also charged with robbing some of the victims’ male companions.

Seven of the eight attacks occurred in the early morning along the beach from Solana Beach to Torrey Pines. The only exception was a July 14 attack, in which Hubbard was charged with a daytime rape that police said occurred at a construction site on Calle Cristobal in Mira Mesa.

If Hubbard is charged in the La Jolla assault, it will represent the first attack tied to the former policeman that did not occur outdoors. Several of the attacks, including the La Jolla incident, occurred in areas patrolled by Hubbard when he worked out of the Police Department’s northern patrol area.

At a court hearing last Friday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Anear said he was studying preliminary DNA test results of evidence gathered at the scene of some of the attacks. However, he refused to comment further when asked about the biochemical tests.

On Thursday, Anear declined to comment on the investigation of the La Jolla incident.

“We are continuing to investigate unsolved cases occurring in the beach areas of the city. But to date no new charges have been filed against Hubbard,” Anear said.

Defense attorney Kerry Steigerwalt said he was aware that law enforcement officials were looking at other unsolved sexual assaults to determine if Hubbard was involved, but he said that so far prosecutors have not offered any evidence linking Hubbard to other attacks.

“There has been no information supplied to me of police reports by way of the district attorney,” Steigerwalt said. “I have seen no hard-core evidence of that allegation or any other.”

Police sources familiar with the La Jolla attack said forensic experts are studying the DNA test results before prosecutors decide whether to charge Hubbard in that rape. The sources, however, declined to elaborate on details of the preliminary DNA test allegedly linking Hubbard to the La Jolla attack.

A law enforcement source familiar with the Hubbard case said investigators “are not working on the assumption that he only began committing crimes on June 15,” the date of the first assault that Hubbard has been formally charged with.

The source made it clear that investigators and prosecutors believe Hubbard may be responsible for earlier attacks that have remained unsolved.

Hubbard, a 4 1/2-year San Diego police veteran, is scheduled to stand trial Feb. 19. He is being held at the County Jail downtown, in lieu of $2 million bail.