Fingerprint plus a DNA match, and cold case gets hot

By Tim McGlone The Virginian-Pilot September 6, 2014

NORFOLK

Her attacker broke in through a back door while she was sleeping. He tied her up and held a knife to her throat. He said he wasn't going to rape her, that he was hungry and just wanted money.

But he did rape her. A month later, he returned in the middle of the night to the same house near Ocean View. He bound the woman and her teenage daughter with duct tape and raped the girl.

Norfolk police investigated, but the case went cold.

Two years later in Kuwait, in 2010, an Army captain was showering when a man whose face was covered by a shirt snuck up behind her holding a box cutter. She tried to fight him, but he began cutting and punching her. He turned her around, then suddenly ran away.

Through DNA testing, authorities discovered that the genetic profile matched in Norfolk and in Kuwait. But the attacker's DNA did not match anyone in the FBI's database.

About a year ago, Norfolk police discovered a match between a fingerprint found on a condom package at one of the 2008 attacks and a Norfolk man, Amin Jason Carl Garcia, according to court records.

Garcia was a Navy reservist who had lived in the Ocean View area in 2008 and who served in Kuwait in 2010.

On Jan. 2 of this year, a Norfolk Circuit Court grand jury indicted Garcia in the Norfolk attacks. Authorities found him in Brooklyn, N.Y., seven days later. Last month, the U.S. Attorney's Office filed a federal charge of attempted rape against Garcia in the Kuwait attack.

Go here to see the original:
Fingerprint plus a DNA match, and cold case gets hot