Taken From Bedrooms: DNA Links Child Kidnap-Assaults

PITTSBURGH -- City and Allegheny County police are now talking about a strong connection between two child abductions and sexual assaults that happened years apart.

Both cases occurred late at night while people in the children's homes were sleeping.

A third case may also be tied to the first two, police said at a news conference on Tuesday morning.

Pittsburgh police said a 9-year-old Brighton Heights girl was abducted from her Elmhurst Avenue home on Nov. 13, 2005, then sexually assaulted in a wooded area and left tied to a pole. She was eventually able to free herself and get help.

More than three years earlier, on April 11, 2002, a 3-year-old was snatched from her Sherman Street home in Wilkinsburg and sexually assaulted, then found wandering on Janero Way in Highland Park, according to police.

On Tuesday, police said both cases have been linked through DNA testing. Also, detectives released pictures of bandanas found at both crime scenes.

The third case happened in Pittsburgh's East Hills section, on the same night as the Wilkinsburg abduction.

Police think that a burglar entered a house on Park Hill Drive through a sliding door, looking for a child to kidnap, but he was scared off by somebody in the home.