DNA tests, police credited in arrest in 2 campus assaults

DNA evidence taken from two sexual assault victims in Madison matched a DNA sample in the state's Crime Lab database, authorities say, enabling officers to arrest Antonio L. Pope last week in connection with the two assaults.

Law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, praised the efforts of the Madison and UW police departments and the State Crime Lab at a news conference today at the Madison lab.

"Solid detective work and forensics resulted in the apprehension of a sexual predator," said UW Chief of Police Susan Riseling. "This case highlights teamwork."

As of this morning, Pope had not been charged in the assaults, but was expected to be charged this afternoon, according to Madison police spokesman Mike Hanson.

Pope was arrested without incident Friday afternoon, less than a week after the second of two campus area sexual assaults, cases in which both female victims were forced into a car, driven to an unknown location and assaulted before being returned to the downtown area. The first happened on Nov. 29 and the second on Dec. 9.

Lautenschlager said DNA samples broke the case.

"The Crime Lab received one sample Dec. 1 and on Dec. 11 received the second sample," she said. "We created a profile here, and the Milwaukee Crime Lab helped to determine if we had a match to the database."

The State Crime Lab started collecting DNA samples from sex offenders in 1994, and from all felons in 2000.

The DNA database only has 92,000 samples in it, compared to 1.2 million fingerprint files in the state database, but the DNA matching is enabling the Crime Lab to close cases more quickly, especially if the suspect arrested wasn't a suspect at first.

"He wasn't a suspect before," Madison Police Capt. Tom Snyder said today. "We worked a lot of angles and had many tips, but the DNA match happened to be what broke the case."

Pope has many previous arrests, including two felony drug possession charges in 2005.

Madison Crime Lab director Jerry Geurts said DNA matching takes time, and isn't as it's portrayed on television shows such as "CSI."

"There's no way to rush it," Geurts said. "If you are working through the night, you maybe can do it in a 24-hour period, but usually, it takes the better part of a week."

DNA submissions to the Crime Lab have increased each year, Lautenschlager said, with 2,297 samples expected to be sent to the Crime Lab this year, an 18 percent increase over 2005.

The work is paying off, she said.

"We are closing cases with great success," Lautenschlager said, adding that the number of cases closed in 2006 - 1,685 - is 51 percent higher than the 1,119 last year.

A backlog still exists at the Crime Lab, with upward of 1,775 cases still pending compared to 1,375 a year ago. Lautenschlager said if DNA testing were taken out of the equation, the backlog would be about half of what it is.

Riseling said students and others on the UW campus still need to be vigilant even though there has been an arrest in the two cases.

"We hope there is heightened awareness now," Riseling said. "We are happy to take this individual off the streets, yet anywhere you go in America, you have to be vigilant."