DNA helps solve 2002 rape case

By Wendy Thomas Russell, Staff writer

LONG BEACH -- It was headed straight for the cold case files.

A 19-year-old Long Beach woman was the victim of a home-invasion rape in July 2002, attacked repeatedly in her own bed with a pillow covering her face. She saw nothing; and without any witnesses or suspects, the rape was deemed almost unsolvable.

Then, a break came.

More than a year later, a "Peeping Tom" named Jose Estorgia Reyes, 35, admitted to burglarizing the apartments of two women in downtown Long Beach. As a result of a plea bargain, he received a four-year prison sentence and was ordered to provide his DNA to authorities.

A Los Angeles County crime lab matched that DNA to the sexual assault, said Long Beach Police Detective Craig Newland, who led the investigation. And on Wednesday, Reyes was convicted of three counts of rape during a residential burglary - each of which carries a maximum penalty of 25 years to life in prison - among other charges.

Reyes is scheduled to be sentenced before Long Beach Superior Court Judge Tomson Ong on Sept. 13.

"I've been in sex crimes 17 years," Newland said. "And this is the first time ... where I've actually sent somebody away and got a cold-hit on a previous crime. I was pretty excited about this."

Reyes, who was briefly jailed for a misdemeanor in 2000 after being caught masturbating outside a woman's window, was arrested in the summer of 2003 after he broke into the apartments of two women, one on Ocean Boulevard, the other on First Street.

Both those incidents were frightening, Newland said, and probably would have been much worse had the women not fought back.

In the first incident, the victim awoke at midnight to see a silhouette of a man standing in the doorway of her bedroom. He lunged on top of her, pinning her to the bed, but she pushed him off and gave chase.

"She realized she's chasing this guy, barefoot, in the middle of the night down Ocean Boulevard," Newland recalled. "So she goes inside and calls the police."

The second incident occurred when Reyes entered the apartment of a female kickboxer on First Street while she was taking a shower. When he reached his hand around the edge of the shower curtain to pull it back, the victim became enraged and pulled the curtain back herself, Newland said.

She prepared to kick him, and he ran. She, too, gave chase and stopped only after realizing she was naked in the street, Newland said.

Both cases were linked to Reyes through fingerprints left on the women's windows.