DNA Helps Crack Cold Case

OCALA, Fla. -- A drop of blood from a murder scene and a sex offender registration helped investigators crack a cold case in Marion County.

Debra Rawls was stabbed to death in June 2004, WESH 2 News reported.

Detectives have had DNA evidence since the murder, but until now, they could never connect it to a suspect.

Frederick Harris, 39, walked out of the Marion County Sheriff's Office on Thursday saying that the police got the wrong man.

"Right now I feel like I'm being kidnapped and taken away from my family. I'll have my day in court," he said.

Harris was picked up at his Leesburg apartment on Wednesday night. In June 2004, Rawls was stabbed violently in her Belleview home. Police said she walked in on Harris burglarizing her house and then he killed her. With his arrest, her son believes the right man is in custody.

"It's been a very good day. It's news we've waited for a long time, and it's a lot of relief," said Curt Bellomy.

The murder scene was very bloody, and from it, police said they got a sample of the killer's blood and sent it to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime lab in 2004.

That lab returned a match on Harris on Wednesday because he had just registered as a sex offender for conviction on another crime and had to give a blood sample.

"Then our deputies approached him, told him that they wanted to talk to him about a sexual registration form, and would he mind coming back to the police department, which he did voluntarily," said Capt. Tommy Bibb, of the Marion County Sheriff's Office

According to detectives, since Harris has moved around so much over the last 12 years, they are looking into whether he could be connected to crimes in other towns.

Police said they never found the murder weapon, a knife, but they know it was one from Rawls' own house.

Rawls' case is the third cold case in Central Florida to be assisted by DNA evidence in the past two weeks.

Last week, Polk County detectives made an arrest in a 1988 murder based on DNA found on the clothing of the victim.

And two weeks ago, Daytona Beach police charged a man with raping and killing a woman, also in 1988. They found the suspect using DNA and fingerprints.