A Racine man suspected in a sequence of unsolved rapes from a number of years in the past has been charged in two circumstances after investigators tracked him down utilizing a DNA profile of his broader household.
Matthew P. Crockett, 46, faces one rely of first-degree sexual assault of a 20-year-old lady in November 2014, and a rely of second-degree sexual assault of a 40-year-old lady in spring of 2015, and two counts of false imprisonment.
Each assaults happened in Kenosha, in accordance with the prison grievance, and every sufferer reported a brief man pulling them right into a white automobile the place he assaulted them.
Investigators from the state Division of Justice’s Sexual Assault Package Initiative have been reviewing proof from backlogged rape kits, the proof collected from victims by nurses. They famous the identical suspect DNA from the 2 Kenosha assaults matched suspect DNA from two extra in Racine from across the identical time.
However the DNA did not match any within the large database of samples collected from offenders nationwide. Investigators then turned to a Texas firm the focuses on evaluating DNA samples to a wider database of DNA submitted by individuals for genealogical analysis. Partial matches can provide investigators a place to begin by figuring out doubtless family members of the particular person with the topic DNA.
In June 2020, the Texas agency had recognized members of the family of the potential Kenosha suspect. By final month, investigators had homed in on Crockett, and picked up a number of cups, bottles, a straw and a spoon from his rubbish. From the objects, they obtained DNA that matched that from the unsolved rapes.
This week, the 2 Kenosha victims every picked Crockett’s picture from an array of potential suspects.
Backlogged rape kits have been an issue over latest years, mendacity round in hospitals and police proof rooms with out ever attending to crime labs for processing. A July 2015 USA TODAY Network investigation revealed that 70,000 rape kits had been untested nationally. In Wisconsin, the determine was about 6,000.
Typically, there was no want to check the kits, as when suspects confessed or victims did not need to press prices.
However many authorities have begun to return and catch up testing of previous kits to seek out potential suspects.
“This end result is precisely what native prosecutors had been hoping for when the lawyer normal and the DOJ redoubled the efforts to get all remaining cold-case sexual assault proof examined just a few years in the past,” stated Kenosha County District Lawyer Michael Graveley.
“Based mostly on the allegation on this grievance, Kenosha is tangibly safer immediately due to these efforts,” he stated.
Graveley and Lawyer Normal Josh Kaul introduced the fees, crediting the various native, state and federal companies that labored collectively.
Crockett made his preliminary court docket look Thursday and is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail.
The DOJ stated victims on the lookout for details about their sexual assault kits ought to contact the regulation enforcement company the place the assault was reported, a neighborhood sexual assault service supplier, or the DOJ Workplace of Crime Sufferer Companies at 1-800-446-6564.
Contact Bruce Vielmetti at (414) 224-2187 or bvielmetti@jrn.com. Observe him on Twitter at @ProofHearsay.
