Sexual Assault Initiative IDs Suspects In Thousands Of W.Va. Cold Cases

Evidence collected but never tested from thousands of sexual assaults across West Virginia has now been identified and tested in the hopes of finding a suspect. 

That’s because in 2015, West Virginia joined a federal Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, known as SAKI, which aims to identify the evidence from a sexual assault which – for a variety of reasons – was never submitted to a lab for DNA testing. 

“The long story short of it, we inventoried all of the unsubmitted kits, sex crime kits for the state of West Virginia. So we identified that there were over 3,200 kits that were previously unsubmitted,” said Larry Hasley, a SAKI spokesman and coordinator for the Monongalia region.

Of those 3,200 cases, roughly 2,600 have now been tested, SAKI officials announced Wednesday. Of those, 438 have been matched to possible suspects in a federal DNA database and have led to several arrests. 

“Since the beginning of this year, we have identified at least two cases that we’ve made an arrest on. There was a Westover police case in [Monongalia] County, a 24-year-old sexual assault case. The perpetrator was identified, and an arrest was made just a couple months ago,” Hasley said.

A second arrest also came out of Monongalia. 

“It was a 31-year-old sexual assault case. The suspect was identified and he was arrested about two weeks ago,” Hasley said.

Matches from assaults in West Virginia have identified suspects as far south as Puerto Rico and as far west and north as Alaska – although most still reside here.