DNA On Cigarette Butt Leads To Rape Conviction

Shawn J. Soper

News Editor

02/16/2006 OCEAN CITY – An Ocean City man identified as the suspect in a two-year-old resort rape case by DNA evidence found on cigarette butts at the crime scene pleaded guilty last week to second-degree rape and now faces as many as 20 years in jail following a pre-sentence investigation.

Daine Olszewski, 34, of Ocean City, was in Worcester County Circuit Court last week facing first-degree rape charges after being arrested in September as the suspect in a rape case in the resort dating back to December 2003. OCPD detectives had several leads and interviewed a number of people during a two-year investigation that had nearly dried up until DNA evidence discovered on cigarette butts at the crime scene linked Olszewski to the incident.

On Dec. 27, 2003, resort police began searching for a man who reportedly raped a 40-year-old Pennsylvania woman at a construction site in north Ocean City. The victim told police she was walking down a sidewalk on 140th Street around 9 p.m. when she was grabbed from behind by a man, later identified as Olszewski, dragged to a nearby construction site and raped behind a trailer stationed in the area.

According the testimony from Olszewski’s preliminary hearing in October, the victim told investigators her attacker smelled like alcohol and cigarettes and told her he wanted sex because he had just gotten out of jail. The cigarettes and the fact he had just gotten out of jail ultimately pinned the crime on Olszewski.

After hitting dead ends on many of their leads, investigators handed the evidence over to the Maryland State Police forensic science division, which was able to obtain a DNA match from cigarette butts at the crime to Olszewski, who was on probation in Ocean City. The forensic division has the ability to match DNA evidence to convicted criminals through the state’s database, and Olszewski was recently paroled.

According to resort police, Olszewski confessed to the crime after the DNA match positively identified him as the suspect.