DNA Evidence in Rape Cases Was Delayed

While accused serial rapist Narcisso Solis cruised Thousand Oaks streets and allegedly raped another woman in July, DNA evidence linking him to two earlier sexual assaults sat unattended in a county crime lab freezer.

Short-staffed and burdened by the demands of several high-profile criminal cases last spring, technicians took nearly six months to alert detectives that stored DNA from Thousand Oaks rapes in January 2002 and August 1998 pointed to a single suspect, officials said.

Three weeks after the DNA similarities were discovered, sheriff’s officials said, crime lab technicians informed investigators that DNA samples taken from a blood test Solis gave after a drunk-driving arrest matched the earlier swabs. Technicians also suspected Solis’ DNA would be similar to that taken from the July rape victim.

“We only had so much staff and there were other priorities that had to be addressed,” sheriff’s spokesman Eric Nishimoto said of the DNA testing delay. “It was due to the high priority of the cases that were currently being tried in court.”

Among the cases in which DNA was key to the prosecution were the triple-murder trial of Socorro Caro and the case of accused Simi Valley serial rapist and murder defendant Vincent Henry Sanchez.

Capt. Frank O’Hanlon, who heads the sheriff’s East County Major Crimes Unit, said detectives would have launched an investigation sooner had they received the DNA analysis before July 31.

But he and others familiar with the case insist they would have had a difficult time finding Solis.

“It was the evidence from the last [sexual assault] that turned the key on Solis,” O’Hanlon said. Sheriff’s detectives arrested Solis Tuesday and booked him on 30 felony counts of sexual assault, burglary, false imprisonment and assault with a deadly weapon. If convicted, he faces life in prison. His arraignment is set for Wednesday. At a news conference announcing Solis’ arrest, Brooks said there were similarities between the Solis case and that of Sanchez, charged with first-degree murder in the 2001 shooting of Moorpark College student Megan Barroso.

Brooks also said information from the Sanchez case helped investigators in pursuing Solis.

The same detectives who arrested Solis on Aug. 15 in the drunk-driving case said they first contacted crime lab technicians in January about a possible connection between a rape that month and the one in 1998.

Lab technicians began testing the DNA a month later, said Cmdr. Brent Morris of the Sheriff Department’s technical services division.

Investigators’ curiosity was raised in January when an 18-year-old woman was raped at knifepoint in her Thousand Oaks home.

Crime analysts, who review crime statistics, told investigators the 1998 rape occurred in the same vicinity as the January Thousand Oaks attack and wondered whether there was a link. The two attacks also followed a similar pattern. In both assaults the victim was attacked as she slept and was threatened with a knife, authorities said.

Although the victims gave different descriptions of their attacker, “we were concerned enough to ask for the match,” O’Hanlon said. A task force was established the day after the DNA match was confirmed and Solis was soon tabbed as a suspect by a parole agent.

Crime lab officials said that staffing problems coupled with heavy demands for their expertise have caused unavoidable delays concerning DNA tests. A complete DNA matching test can be completed in a week, but waits of more than three months for test results are not unusual in the county, Morris said.

“Between 1997 and 2000 there was a 135% increase in backlog in DNA cases across the country,” Morris said. “We are mirroring a problem that is nationwide.”

Although 10 new cases arrive each month that require DNA analysis, the local crime lab only has one DNA analyst working full time, Morris said.

“In a perfect world I would like to have three more DNA analysts,” Morris said. “I would like to get on all these cases quicker.”