Chicago cops nab 3rd rape suspect

By David Heinzmann, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Carlos Sadovi contributed to this report

January 7, 2004

When Chicago police Detective Jeffrey Roberts returned from Florida on Sunday with a rape suspect in custody, it was the third case in a month he had closed with the help of a national DNA database.

The latest suspect is Anthony Goldsmith, 45, who waived extradition and flew from Pensacola with Roberts. The former Chicago resident has been charged with the 1997 rape of an 11-year-old girl who was walking to school.

For Roberts, who investigates sex crimes on the South Side, it was the third time since December that the FBI Combined DNA Index System had led to charges in an unsolved rape.

Roy McClinton, whose DNA was entered into the system after he was convicted of rape in Minnesota, was identified as the rapist in a 2001 sexual assault in Chicago, Roberts said.

And on Dec. 12, an Illinois prison inmate, Latheryan Williams, was charged with a 1999 rape in Chicago. Williams was in prison for separate 1999 murder and rape cases.

While Chicago struggles to enter a backlog of DNA evidence into the database, police say they are solving a growing number of old sexual assaults.

"This is progress, but we need more," Roberts said.

Last month, Gov. Rod Blagojevich promised to find $3 million in the state budget to clear a backlog of untested DNA evidence collected from about 1,500 rape victims. He planned to earmark the money to pay for hiring and training more scientists at the State Police Crime Lab.

The governor's announcement came after a group of women started the non-profit Women's DNA Initiative to pay to have the three-year backlog analyzed.

Women's DNA Initiative has raised about $130,000 to help pay the estimated $1 million cost of eliminating the backlog of so-called rape kits, said one of the founders, Sheri Mecklenburg, chief legal counsel to police Supt. Philip J. Cline.

Once the DNA is tested, the results are entered into the national database. The kits contain DNA left by rapists that can be compared to the database.

In New York, clearing a backlog of 17,000 cases led to 107 arrests.

Goldsmith was convicted of a robbery in Florida over the summer, Roberts said. He was sentenced to probation and continued living in Florida, but his DNA was entered into the database.

In September the state crime lab alerted Chicago police about the match and Roberts and Detective Jennifer Ghoston began putting the case together. The victim, now 17, identified Goldsmith from five photographs.

The FBI Violent Crimes Task Force arrested him in Florida just before Christmas.

Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune

Backlog,,, but prosecutors fight to prevent convicts from geting post-conviction relief such as dna-testing of old evidence.

Backlog,,, but no one really wants to clear up that backlog. After all, its very "low grade" ore. If anyone is found he is likely to be dead or in prison on a long sentence anyway. And you have clear up an awful lot of backlog ... .

Things don't seem to get done until they become politicized and then they don't get done well. Its like breast cancer mammograms: some of those activists want an entire radiology office going day after day for ten years, before it will fine just ONE case that would not otherwise be found. Only after the marches and lies, does anything get done.

What's that saying? A stitch in time saves nine.

The shelves are sagging in the evidence room. If they instead get all those kits off the shelving and into the databases, the time and money spent is viewed as of marginal usefulness.

Defense argues testing of bloodstains on T-shirt was done in bad faith

January 15 (UNION-TRIBUNE)
Newly discovered evidence against Richard Tuite will be admissible at his trial in the 1998 stabbing death of Stephanie Crowe, a judge ruled yesterday.

DNA tests done last month showed the Escondido 12-year-old was the source of bloodstains found near the bottom hem of a white undershirt worn by Tuite the night of the crime.

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1893112,00.html

Murder 20 years ago is solved but unresolved
Killer of Aurora family still at large

By 9NEWS

Post file
A John Doe warrant based solely on DNA evidence has been issued in the 1984 murders of three members of the Bennett family, shown here in a family photo. Only 3-year-old Vanessa (on right) survived.

Friday is the 20th anniversary of one of the worst murders in Aurora’s history.

Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter Melissa were beaten to death with a hammer in their home in 1984. Three-year-old Vanessa was the only survivor and witness to the crime.

The cold-case room at Aurora Police headquarters has binders full of clues and evidence. Over the years, detectives have gone over it using new DNA technology.

A year and a half ago, it gave them their biggest clue in two decades.

“We were able to find a piece of evidence that had DNA on it,” said Aurora Police Detective Casey Williams.

“It is an absolute identification so the case is actually solved. He's known; we just don't have his name,” Ann Tomsic, Arapahoe Deputy District Attorney added.

Arapahoe County has issued an arrest warrant for John Doe. The unnamed suspect's DNA is now in a state and federal data bank. It is being cross-referenced with the DNA of other convicted violent offenders.

Vanessa Bennett is 23 now and still lives in Colorado. Her grandmother says she still suffers a lot of physical and emotional struggles from the attack.

This is the guy that did it, according to the DNA profile:

The following story about the Bennett case by reporters Sean Kelly and Marilyn Robinson appeared in The Denver Post on Aug. 17, 2003:

Arapahoe County investigators know who bludgeoned three members of the Bennett family to death in their Aurora home on Jan. 16, 1984.

He is D3S1358: 15/16, vWA: 17/17, FGA: 22.5/ 25, D8S1179: 12/13, D21S11: 30.2/31, D18S51: 13/ 14, D5S818: 12/12, D13S317: 11/12, D7S820: 7/9, D16S539: 10/11, THO1: 6/9, TPOX: 8/11, CSF1PO: 11/11 and DQ alpha 4/4.

(if you click on the link, there's another article about John Doe arrest warrants--the pros and cons)

Detective testifies DNA evidence shelved

A witness in the Ladon Stephens trial says evidence from a 1997 assault sat unprocessed for five years

01/28/04
MAXINE BERNSTEIN

A detective who investigated the February 1997 sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in Northeast Portland testified in court Tuesday that, at the time, he didn't quite believe the girl was giving him a full account of what occurred that night.
From Our Advertiser

Multnomah County prosecutor Rod Underhill called Frank Klejmont, a retired Portland police detective who is now director of security for Portland Public Schools, to the witness stand during the second day of Ladon A. Stephens' trial.

Stephens, 35, faces 31 counts of aggravated murder, kidnapping, rape and sodomy charges in the December 2001 killing of 14-year-old Melissa Bittler, three 1997 rapes of 14- and 15-year-old girls in North and Northeast Portland, and the April 2002 rape of his girlfriend's cousin. DNA evidence has tied him to four of the five crimes.

Underhill briefly questioned Klejmont to establish that he was the "custodian" in charge of the DNA evidence from the assault. Klejmont said he interviewed the 14-year-old girl at Legacy Emanuel Hospital & Health Center that night, Feb. 9, 1997, and obtained from a nurse the rape kit containing evidence from the assault. Klejmont said he placed it in Central Precinct's property evidence room.

Stephens' defense attorney, Jane Claus, questioned Klejmont further.

"Any particular reason it went straight to the property room as opposed to the crime lab?" Claus said.

"No specific reason," Klejmont said.

Claus asked the retired detective to review his 1997 police report on the sexual assault. She asked whether the detective thought the 14-year-old victim wasn't telling the entire story.

"Yes," Klejmont said.

Claus asked why.

"Well, she was young. She was almost 15. . . . I felt there may be more to this story than I was getting at this time," Klejmont said.

Responding to Claus' questions, Klejmont said he questioned the teenage girl about her prior sexual encounters, and her boyfriend, whose home she had visited earlier that night.

On Tuesday, the victim of that sexual assault, now 21, hesitantly took the witness stand, grasping a red rubber stress-relief ball. She described how a man attacked her while she was walking from her boyfriend's home to catch a bus.

Two blocks from the bus stop in the 1500 block of Northeast Liberty Street, she noticed a man walking behind her. She said she purposely crossed the street to walk on the other side. He crossed, too. She then crossed back, and he followed.

She said he rushed up behind her, grabbed her around the neck and dragged her to a rear yard of an abandoned home. He made her get on her knees and had her perform oral sex while he directed her, she said. She said he forced her to turn around, began choking her and she passed out. When she awoke, he was on top of her.

In court, she said she recognized Stephens' voice. But she could not identify him as the man who raped her.

"Is it fair to say that you can't say with absolute certainty, Mr. Stephens is the person?" Claus said.

"I don't know," the woman said.

Her 1997 rape kit was not examined by the state crime lab until five years later. It wasn't until early 2002, a couple of months after the 2001 sexual assault and killing of Bittler, that police looked back at 10 years' worth of unsolved rape cases and submitted the five-year-old rape kit to the state crime lab.

The prosecutor intends to show that in 2002, DNA evidence from her assault linked Stephens to the crime. The DNA evidence also linked her assault to a Feb. 27, 1997, rape of a 15-year-old Roosevelt High School student and the Nov. 5, 1997, sexual assault of a 14-year-old Jefferson High student.

POSTED: 8:04 AM PST February 10, 2004
UPDATED: 1:01 PM PST February 10, 2004
SAN DIEGO -- The case of 9-year-old kidnapping and murder victim Laura Arroyo is finally going to court -- 13 years after her disappearance.

1n 1991, Arroyo went to answer the doorbell of her Otay Mesa condominium, but when her parents went to check on her, the door was open and she was gone.

Arroyo's body was found behind a Chula Vista church 10 hours later.

DNA tests done last September linked a neighbor, Manuel Bracamontes, to Arroyo's death. He was arrested in October.

A preliminary hearing is being held Tuesday to determine whether there is enough evidence to try Bracamontes.