NYPD Cracks 30-Year-Old Rape Cold Case Using DNA from Unrelated Arrest
William Stephens, 55, was arrested Friday after his DNA, collected during a minor charge arrest, matched evidence from a 1995 Brooklyn rape.
New York City police have arrested a suspect in a 30-year-old rape case, leveraging DNA evidence gathered from an unrelated, recent arrest. William Stephens, 55, was taken into custody on Friday, with authorities stating his DNA matched that of the perpetrator in a 1995 rape that occurred in Brooklyn.
The sexual assault took place on August 2, 1995, in an apartment building in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The victim did not know her attacker, according to law enforcement sources.
The case remained unsolved for years. However, in 2005, Brooklyn prosecutors secured an indictment against "John Doe," using the rapist's DNA profile. This legal strategy aimed to circumvent the statute of limitations for future prosecution.
Investigators later identified Stephens, a resident of the Bronx, as a person of interest after his DNA profile was found during a search of a state DNA database. Sources indicated that Stephens had an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court on an unrelated open container charge. This led to his arrest in July on that minor charge, providing police with the opportunity to collect his DNA.
While Stephens was in custody on the July charge, law enforcement obtained an "abandonment sample" of his DNA. The NYPD Special Victims Unit's DNA Cold Case Squad and Investigative Genetic Genealogy Squad then confirmed that this DNA matched the profile from the 1995 crime scene.
Stephens was arrested in the Bronx on Friday in connection with the 1995 cold case rape.