Man indicted in '92 Weymouth rape after DNA testing

The rape case was so old that the Weymouth detectives who originally investigated it had retired and detectives who still work in the department could hardly remember it.

But then investigators got a break -- nearly 15 years after a man dragged a 17-year-old girl off the street and raped her and weeks before the statute of limitations would have made the crime unprosecutable.

Analysts at the State Police Crime Laboratory in Maynard discovered a match for DNA evidence taken at the time.

On Wednesday, a Norfolk County grand jury indicted Martin D. Lovato, 47, who lived near the victim's home at the time of the crime. He was charged with three counts of aggravated rape, one count of kidnapping, and three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14.

Lovato is serving a life sentence in the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Shirley after being convicted in January in the 1994 sexual assault of a 16-year-old from Quincy. In February, he was charged with the 1992 rape of a 17-year-old baby sitter in Leicester, based on DNA evidence. Now, investigators hope they can solve three other rapes in the area from 1992 through 1994, said Captain Brian Callahan.

The victim, who now works in the medical field, had visited Weymouth police last year, one of her many inquires into whether there were any new leads in the case.

But, as usual, there was nothing. Records of the 1992 investigation were buried away in a back room.

At the State Police Crime Laboratory, analysts were converting DNA evidence from old crimes into digital files and entering them in a federal database of felons' genetic information.

DNA from the Weymouth case, preserved in a walk-in cooler, matched the DNA of Lovato, according to State Police. Because Lovato had been convicted in 2005 in a separate crime, his DNA was in a database.

Analysts entered data from the Weymouth woman's rape kit last month, said Mary Kate McGilvray, acting director of the State Police Crime Laboratory.

One week later, they found a match and sent a letter to local police, McGilvray said.