DNA Matches Suspect to Rape of 14-year-old Girl

INDIANAPOLIS - DNA led Indianapolis Metropolitan Police detectives to a rape suspect. They admit without that evidence they would still be searching for the rapist.

The victim, a 14-year-old-girl, was waiting for the school bus on March 23 to go to John Marshall Middle School, but instead police say a rapist kidnapped her at knifepoint, took her to a vacant home, raped and beat her. Now, police say the man who did it is behind bars.

Sex crimes detective Linda White escorted the handcuffed Stephen Sides to the Arrestee Processing Center Tuesday night. She said detectives arrested the 40-year-old just hours after she learned his DNA matched DNA collected in the rape of a 14-year-old girl.

"His name had never surfaced I had never heard his name," White said.

But White said she followed every lead and interviewed more than 50 people over several weeks. Her case file turned into a case box, but none of the tips led her to Sides.

"At this point he was a totally new person to me," she said.

Then White received the DNA results.

"Pretty conclusive DNA doesn't lie."

The investigation did not end with a DNA match. Now, White had to find out where Sides was living. She questioned many people and pounded the pavement until she arrived at the 4000 block of Arborcrest Dr where Sides was staying, just blocks from the crime scene.

"I got a sense that, that he was, you could tell that he had some doubts of what he had done and that he was maybe reliving it in his mind. And of course he never admitted to anything to us," White said.

Sides now faces preliminary rape, criminal confinement and battery charges and a school community is relieved.

"We are overjoyed. We are happy about the person being locked up. We are relieved about a kid being able to come back to school now knowing that the person who victimized her is gone and won't be back on the streets hopefully," said Jeffrey White, John Marshall Middle School Principal.

Sides DNA was in the database because he served nearly four months in the State Department of Correction for criminal confinement in connection to a domestic battery case in 2001. It is standard procedure for DOC to collect prisoner DNA.

Sides remains in the Marion County jail.