Felon’s DNA sample prompts charges in girl’s 1996 rape

A DNA hit prompted Jackson County prosecutors today to charge a 46-year-old man in connection with 1996 abduction and rape of a 9-year-old girl.

Prosecutors charged Dwayne C. Jones of Kansas City with forcible rape, statutory rape, forcible sodomy and statutory sodomy.

Police arrested Jones at his home Tuesday. His name had not come up in the investigation until the DNA hit on Feb. 1, police said.

Jones had to submit a DNA sample to his probation officer to comply with a 2005 law that requires samples from all felons, even ones convicted of non-violent crimes. He gave the sample about two months ago, police said.

Jones criminal record included only non-violent convictions, police said. He did not know his victim nor did he live in her neighborhood.

“He was never on our radar,” said Sex Crimes Sgt. Kevin Kilkenny.

Jones is accused of snatching a girl off the street on Jan. 26, 1996, near 43rd Street and Mersington Avenue when Jones would have been 35 years old. Police said the 9-year-old girl was walking with her 10-year-old brother and some friends to a store when the girl ran back to her home to get something.

After the girl left her home, a beige car approached. The driver convinced the girl to come closer to the car then grabbed her, pulled her across his lap and drove off.

The girl’s brother immediately reported the abduction. Officers learned shortly thereafter that the girl had been found in the 4600 block of Cleveland, where her abductor had dropped her off.

The girl told police her attacker drove her to an unknown location, where he raped and sodomized her inside the car.

Police collected evidence from the girl. Police developed a DNA profile in 1999. The profile sat in a national database without any matches until this month.