DNA test leads to charges in ’94 rape case

By CHRISTINE VENDEL

A cold DNA hit prompted Jackson County prosecutors to charge a man Friday with raping a 7-year-old girl in her home in 1994.

Prosecutors charged Allen G. Hale, 42, with one count of forcible rape and one count of statutory rape. He was in jail Friday night. Bond was set at $250,000.

Police said Hale surrendered to police Friday on a probation violation stemming from a previous conviction for distributing a controlled substance.

It was the drug conviction from 2003 that helped police link Hale to the rape. While in prison, Hale had to submit a DNA sample, which was placed into a national database. In February, the database matched him to DNA recovered from the unsolved rape.

Missouri officials said Hale was supposed to register as a sex offender when he was released from prison last year, but he did not. Police said he was connected to a sex crime from 1990, but details of that case were not available Friday.

Police think Hale knew the rape victim’s mother. The crime occurred Aug. 12, 1994.

Court records gave this account:

The girl was asleep on the couch. Her siblings, ages 3, 5 and 10, also were asleep. Their mother was gone, police said.

A man crept into the house through a first-floor bedroom window. He picked up the girl, carried her to a bedroom and said, “If you talk, I’ll kill you.” The man raped the girl and put his hand over her face, “making it hard for her to breathe,” according to court records.

The rapist left out the front door.