Police pursuing second suspect

After arresting a New Haven man in connection with the 1991 rape of a North Mianus woman based on DNA evidence, detectives are hoping to soon arrest a second man implicated in the attack, Detective Lt. Mark Marino said.

Four detectives are working on the case, Marino said, but he declined to say yesterday whether police had identified the second suspect in the Sept. 2, 1991, attack in which the two men allegedly entered a North Mianus home around 5 a.m. and sexually assaulted the woman who had been sleeping there.

"It's extremely active," Marino said of the case.

On Tuesday police arrested Brian K. Higgins, 36, of 1546 Chapel St., New Haven, and charged him with first-degree sexual assault and first-degree kidnapping.

Higgins was an acquaintance of the victim, Marino said.

On Wednesday, State Superior Court Judge Martin Nigro transferred Higgins' case to the Part A docket, where more serious offenses are handled, and raised his bond from $750,000 to $1 million, according to the criminal clerk's office of state Superior Court in Stamford.

The Connecticut State Police Crime Lab in Meriden contacted town police last month after a check of unidentified DNA samples from crime scenes matched Higgins' sample submitted in CODIS, the FBI's DNA databank, from a September 2006 New York City sex assault arrest.

Higgins still faces several charges stemming from the New York City arrest, according to court records.

Nicholas Yang, a forensic science examiner for the Meriden laboratory, said recent legislation requiring the DNA of known felons to be entered into CODIS has resulted in a significant jump in matches and older cases being solved.

Samples from unidentified suspects in Connecticut's database are checked against newly uploaded profiles of known felons from around the country each week, Yang said.

"We process the samples and generate a profile uploaded to the local database, which is eventually uploaded to the national database," Yang said. "The blood of convicted felons is uploaded to the same database in a different section."

Howard Ehring, the public defender representing Higgins in Stamford, declined comment on the case, and the state attorney's office in Stamford has yet to assign a prosecutor to the case.

Higgins was arrested by New York City police on Sept. 6, 2006, and charged with first-degree sexual assault and sodomy, and is next scheduled to appear in Kings County Criminal Court in Brooklyn on July 23, according to Deputy Chief Criminal Clerk Timothy McGrath. McGrath said the file is sealed under New York privacy laws for victims of sex offenders, and lawyers listed as representing Higgins in that case declined comment.

Marino said that DNA had recently resolved two other large cases -- a 2003 bank robbery, and the 2006 botched holdup of Betteridge Jewelers on Greenwich Avenue.

In January Gerald Kruger, 49, of Atlantic City, N.J., pleaded guilty to robbing the Patriot National Bank on Mason Street as well as the People's Bank on Edgerton Street in Darien.

In that case, federal authorities used DNA from a sweatshirt and baseball cap recovered by police near Patriot Bank to link Kruger to the crime.

In December, federal authorities arrested Charles Kertesz, 36, of Milford, in connection with the attempted holdup of Betteridge Jewelers.

Police filed a warrant for Kertesz's DNA after an informant provided information, and the Connecticut State Police Crime Lab in Meriden indicated that it matched that found on a hat left in a bag dropped by a gunman fleeing the scene on motorcycle.

"This is obviously a great tool for us," Marino said. "I think more and more in the future, as the CODIS database gets bigger, we'll be seeing more crimes solved this way."

Higgins is next scheduled to appear in state Superior Court in Stamford on July 9.