DNA Leads to Arrest in Rape Cases

Using DNA evidence, sheriff’s investigators have arrested a Thousand Oaks tile setter they suspect is a serial rapist responsible for at least three sexual assaults in the city during the past four years.

Narcisso Solis, 40, was arrested in Ventura County Jail on Tuesday just as he was about to be released after spending the weekend behind bars on suspicion of drunk driving.

Solis was arrested Aug. 15 on suspicion of driving under the influence just hours after he was placed under surveillance as a prime suspect in the sexual assaults, which began in August 1998 and include the July 16 rape this year of a 27-year-old woman in her Hillcrest Drive apartment.

He was booked Tuesday on 30 felony counts of sexual assault, burglary, false imprisonment and assault with a deadly weapon. If convicted he faces life in prison.

Solis appeared in court briefly Wednesday, but his arraignment was postponed until Aug. 28 at the request of defense attorneys.

Authorities suspect the Texas native--who has a criminal record dating back more than a decade--is also responsible for at least two other unsolved Thousand Oaks rape cases. They have notified other law enforcement agencies in Ventura and Los Angeles counties about Solis’ arrest and his possible link to additional cases.

“This case is not closed and we are continuing to investigate other rapes,” Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks said during a news conference Wednesday announcing Solis’ arrest. “We want the public to be alerted that there may be other victims. We wish we could have spared them the trauma of Mr. Solis.”

Solis was arrested earlier in connection with a 1990 Thousand Oaks sexual assault but was released because of a lack of evidence. He is also suspected in a 1993 Thousand Oaks case. The sheriff’s crime lab is studying DNA samples from both incidents, Brooks said.

The Solis arrest was the culmination of a monthlong investigation that had detectives contacting FBI and state parole agents for clues and retracing their paths in the investigation of Simi Valley serial rapist Vincent Sanchez, who is charged with first-degree murder in the July 2001 shooting death of Megan Barroso, a Moorpark College student.

Brooks said there were numerous similarities between the criminal habits of the men, most notably that the sexual assaults that Sanchez has admitted to and that Solis is suspected of became progressively more violent. Also, asin the Sanchez case, investigators conducting search warrants this week at an apartment and house where Solis recently lived discovered items linking Solis to the three rapes.

Both Sanchez, a 31-year-old unemployed handyman, and Solis had bounced from job to job in the months before their arrests, giving both men large amounts of time that was unaccounted for.

With these similarities as a guide, sheriff’s investigators grew concerned that the next rape victim would suffer the same fate as Barroso.

“We treated this like it was the Sanchez case,” Brooks said of investigators who traded information with their Simi Valley counterparts. “We pulled out all the stops because we wanted to get all over this case quickly.”

As Solis was being processed for release from jail Tuesday, detectives were anxiously awaiting DNA test results from the county sheriff’s crime lab. After an order by Brooks to put all other cases aside until the Solis analysis was complete, the DNA match was returned. Detectives and prosecutors then agreed that the evidence against the ex-convict was enough to keep him locked up.

“Hard work often translates into good luck,” Undersheriff Craig Husband said. “We were racing the clock. And we had to make a decision. We did not want him back on the street and put the community at risk.”

Detectives learned on July 31 that DNA recovered from assaults in January 2002 and August 1998 matched each other, but they did not link Solis to those samples until Tuesday when his test results came back.

Results are expected today from DNA tests on samples recovered in the July 16 assault, and officials expect they too will match Solis.

Investigators first considered Solis as a suspect in the three assaults after they received a tip from a state parole officer in Oxnard who supervised Solis after his release from state prison on a drug conviction in 2001.

Solis completed his parole requirements in May, officials said.

Brooks said investigators chose not to inform the public of the DNA match in the two earlier rapes until the link to Solis was established. Until the DNA match, Brooks said, investigators did not have a good enough description of the suspect to warrant public notification.

Credit for the arrest of Solis should go to “the victims who had the courage to come forward and cooperate with us,” said Capt. Frank O’Hanlon, who heads the sheriff’s East County Major Crimes Unit.

O’Hanlon, who directed the task force seeking a connection between the July 16 rape and the earlier assaults, said the information gleaned from interviews with the victims allowed investigators to build an accurate profile of the suspect. That information was given to the parole agent, Kevin Kelly, who recommended they check out Solis.

“The victims gave us descriptions for drawings so we could put together a profile,” O’Hanlon said. “If they had not come forward, we would not be where we are today.”