Investigation helped give Christine Kamin 'peace of mind'

By Pam Regensberg, Camera Staff Writer
June 9, 2002

The news that a woman had been murdered in Boulder reached Christine Kamin in
Virginia, where she had sought safety and distance from a 1990 rape that stripped
her of trust in people.

Kamin's mother called from Boulder after the December 1997 slaying to tell her that a
University of Colorado student had been beaten to death.

Television and newspapers reported that Susannah Chase, a 23-year-old CU senior,
was walking home from a downtown Boulder pizzeria when she was attacked
across the street from her home at 18th and Spruce streets, dragged into a vehicle
and later dumped in a nearby alley.

Chase died the next day from massive head wounds.

Kamin said she thought her murder "had nothing to do with my case."

As it turned out, Kamin said, her rape case was solved because Susannah Chase, a
woman she never met, was murdered.

After Chase was killed, investigators began sifting through old cases that had
similarities to the slaying. Police resubmitted the DNA evidence from Kamin's case to
see if it matched that collected from Chase. It didn't, but in the process, police
discovered the identity of Kamin's rapist.

Twelve years after she was attacked, Kamin's assailant is behind bars, and she has
something that had eluded her for years: peace of mind.

"I was accepting that this was never going to be solved and that I needed to get on
with my life and not worry about it anymore," Kamin, 31, said last month from her
home in Alabama.

As appalling as the unsolved murder is, Kamin said she wants to give the Chase
family something in return. Hope.

"It's very upsetting for everybody," she said. "Hopefully, the one thing that they can
get from my situation is that ... 12 years later something positive did come out of it."

After her assailant, Michael Eugene Shreck, was sentenced to life in prison late last
month, Kamin sent an e-mail to Chase's older brother, saying she would like to talk to
him and his family, to offer condolences and to give them hope.

Kamin and the Chase family have continued communicating by e-mail and say they
would like to meet.

"We're thrilled for Christine ... that she had some resolution," Steve Chase said
recently from his New York office. "I hope we can have the same. Our focus is on
Susannah and her memory, but we'd all like to see this guy caught."

It was about 3:50 a.m. on April 22, 1999, when Kamin — a 19-year-old college student
— pedaled her bike toward her home. She was on a path near the intersection of
Broadway and Baseline Road when she said she sensed someone's presence, she
recalled. As she turned, she saw a man running toward her. He reached her,
knocked her off her bike and pinned her to the ground.

The assailant, with tattooed arms and scraggly hair, threatened to cut her throat.

"He said, 'This is a rape — don't make it a murder,'" she testified at her attacker's
kidnapping and rape trial last month.

He then tried shoving her into the trunk of his car, at one point choking her until she
nearly passed out, she said. Kamin resisted but later told him she would cooperate if
he didn't stuff her into his car.

During the sexual assault on a nearby grassy area, the man abruptly stopped
because he saw a police car, she said. He continued but again paused because
another squad car drove nearby.

He then told her, "I'm not going to get in trouble for this. I'm not going to get caught,"
she said.

That was the last time she saw the man until eight years later.

Michael Eugene Shreck was serving a prison sentence for vandalism when he was
charged with Kamin's rape. Years earlier, his DNA had mistakenly been placed into a
state database, which is how authorities cracked the rape case.

Colorado prison officials falsely thought Shreck was a convicted sex offender
because he admitted to impregnating a 15-year-old Minnesota girl in 1990. Although
prosecutors dismissed that sexual misconduct case, prison officials still placed
Shreck's DNA in a database.

Colorado law allows prison authorities to collect DNA only from those convicted of
certain sex crimes and certain violent offenders.

On May 17, a Boulder County jury convicted Shreck of the kidnapping and sexual
assault of Kamin. He has been sentenced to life in prison, but he plans to appeal the
conviction, his attorney, Nancy Holton, said.

The prospect worries Kamin, but for now she wants to show her gratitude to many
people: The jury, CU police Lt. Michell Irving and Detective Tim DeLaria and the family
of Susannah Chase.

"If there's anything I can do to try to keep that investigation alive," she said, "I'll be glad
to help."

The Chase family, meanwhile, says it will continue to hold out hope and urge
legislators to establish a more uniform system for collecting DNA of prison inmates.

Kamin's case, Steve Chase said, is an example of who DNA databases can solve
cases. His hope is that his sister's murder will someday be solved, perhaps through a
DNA database.

"If somebody is capable of doing such a heinous crime ... the odds are they'll do it
again," he said. "We're kind of in a waiting game."

Contact Pam Regensberg at (303) 473-1329 or regensbergp@thedailycamera.com.