DNA link solves 20-year mystery

By GREGG WYCHERLEY and PAUL YANDALL

United States police have used 20-year-old DNA evidence to arrest a man for the vicious rape of a New Zealand woman hitch-hiker who was strangled, bashed over the head with a concrete slab and left for dead.

The woman, then 20, was attacked while hitchhiking near Tallahassee, Florida's state capital, on a trip to the United States in 1981.

On Tuesday, Willie Oliver, aged 52, was arrested and charged with sexual battery involving serious physical force.

Florida police said a new DNA test had matched semen taken from the victim after the attack to Oliver's DNA, kept in a state database of convicted criminals.

"I'm quite blown away," said the victim who is now 40.

"It's amazing that after so long, two and two can still be put together and people can still be held accountable for their crimes."

The brutal attack shocked Tallahassee locals who rallied around the woman, raising more than $6000 for her medical care and fares for her family to join her.

Even President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy sent a card to the woman, who had recently graduated from a nursing school in Auckland and decided to tour the United States before getting a job.

"We hope that you will soon be feeling better and we send you our warm good wishes," it said.

The Tallahassee Democrat newspaper reported her hitchhiking trip began in Virginia in September that year and took her to Panama City in Florida. From there, she headed to New Orleans.

A man named James offered to give her a lift there on November 10.

But instead of driving west towards Louisiana, he turned east towards Tallahassee.

He told the woman he needed to drop off a package at a friend's home and turned off the interstate highway and drove into some a nearby wooded area.

There, he sexually assaulted her and strangled her with the straps of her own overalls.

He dragged her into the trees and smashed her head with a cement slab, leaving her for dead.

But the woman survived and managed to crawl her way to help.

She spent 16 days at the Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Centre undergoing multiple operations to repair the damage to her face and skull.

The woman's mother and father joined her three days after the attack and she returned to New Zealand in December 1981.

She said this week that she had put the incident behind her but would return for a trial if necessary.

"I've moved on. I've got a great life, two great children and a wonderful husband."

After the attack, US detectives began looking for "James," who the woman described as a tall, slender black man in his early 30s, driving a white and maroon car.

They had little luck - until they attended a seminar last year at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).

A new DNA testing technology, the STR test, had been developed.

The latest in DNA comparison, it was able to match minute traces to a suspect with a one in several billion probability, said David Coffman, who heads the FDLE's DNA database team.

The detectives could compare evidence from the attack against a state collection of more than 110,000 DNA samples collected from convicted criminals.

Oliver has a criminal history stretching back to 1969, and has been jailed for burglary, robbery and counterfeiting lottery tickets.

He was charged with a sex-related homicide in 1976, but the charge was dropped because of lack of evidence.

This time DNA turned out to be all the evidence investigators needed.

The test showed that DNA from the 1981 case matched Oliver, as did the raped woman's description of her attacker. Further evidence was provided by computer records showing he had used the alias "James".

An hour before dawn on Tuesday, St. Petersburg police knocked on the door of the small apartment Oliver shares with his girlfriend.

He surrendered quietly, protesting his innocence.

"The only thing I can say is that this has been a mistake," Oliver said after his arrest.

"I know that what they've got me accused of, I didn't do."

He is being held in the Pinellas County Jail pending his transfer to Leon County.

The victim said she would return for a trial if necessary. If Oliver is convicted, he could face life in prison.

The statute of limitations does not apply to the 20-year-old rape because it was felony carrying a penalty of life imprisonment, said State Attorney Willie Meggs.