and not <i>quite</i> on topic...<BR>Seemed the best place to stick it though--without a new thread. I don't recall thsi here, prob'ly was and recall is just bad. But, made me curious...<BR><b>DNA links suspect in Colorado assaults to Philadelphia rapist <BR>Wednesday, September 19, 2001<P>By JOE GARNER<BR>SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE<P>FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- The man suspected of six sexual assaults in Fort Collins this summer is Philadelphia's infamous "Center City rapist," a sexual predator who assaulted six women and murdered one in a series of crimes that terrorized the city over two years, police said.<P>The link was confirmed by DNA comparisons that "positively identified" the Fort Collins suspect as the man Philadelphia police have sought since 1997.<P>"We do not have a name, but the code of the DNA from the Fort Collins cases matches DNA from the Philadelphia cases," Fort Collins police spokeswoman Rita Davis said Monday.<P>The Philadelphia assaults led to a pending lawsuit against the city by the parents of 23-year-old Shannon Schieber, a student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.<P>Schieber's parents claim city police set the stage for her May 7, 1998, murder by inaction and "downgrading" the crimes, blinding themselves and the public to what was a growing danger in the Center City area.<P>Two police officers responding to a 911 call from neighbors who had heard screams, the suit contends, knocked on Schieber's door but left when no one answered. Inside, Schieber was being strangled.<P>Fort Collins' link to the Philadelphia crimes came after Fort Collins police circulated information about the six sexual attacks in this northern Colorado college town to other police agencies, Davis said.<P>Philadelphia investigators could not travel to Fort Collins until the weekend because air travel shut down because of the terrorist attacks.<P>Davis said the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has confirmed that DNA recovered from the first and fourth sexual assaults in Fort Collins matched, Davis said.<P>The Philadelphia attacks occurred between June 1997 and August 1999. The Fort Collins attacks occurred May 10, June 13 and 24, July 26, Aug. 5 and Aug. 23.<P>"He's certainly a shrewd individual because he's able to do this as long as he has and get away," Philadelphia police Cpl. Jim Pauley said. "He's not a dummy."<P></b><BR><a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/39351_rape19.shtml";>http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/39351_rape19.shtml<;/a>