A man is in custody and facing multiple sexual assault charges after police say detectives were able to use his DNA to link him to two cold cases from the 1990s.
According to the Denton Police Department, 53-year-old Marcus Deshaun Johnson has been arrested and indicted for two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and three counts of aggravated sexual assault related to cases from 1993 and 1997.
Detectives said in a statement Tuesday that on Oct. 21, 1993, a 15-year-old girl said she was sexually assaulted by a man while waiting for members of her cross-country team in a park on the 2000 block of W. Windsor Drive. Four years later, on Sept. 17, 1997, a woman reported she was sexually assaulted in the same park while out for a walk.
Denton Police said the same investigator worked on both cases and that after "a thorough investigation and interviews with the two sexual assault survivors, evidence led the detective to believe both cases were related." However, Denton Police said, "Despite this important development, all suspect leads at the time were exhausted and did not turn up the suspect responsible."
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In 1998, crime lab reports from the Texas Department of Public Safety indicated DNA collected in both cases could have come from the same man.
"The profile was obtained and entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and was continuously searched since its entry in 1999. There were no hits," police said.
Police said in a statement Tuesday that Johnson had been identified this year as a person of interest in the cases after a statewide DNA search said there was "reasonable probability the unknown serial sexual assault suspect was related to a specific known offender in the criminal justice system."
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Detectives learned Johnson was now living in Las Vegas. Denton Police worked with Las Vegas Police and the FBI to obtain a DNA sample for further analysis, the results of which "concluded that Johnson's DNA profile could not be excluded as a contributor to the DNA samples collected during the 1993 and 1997 investigations."
Officers also learned that the description of the attacker provided by both survivors during their initial interviews was similar to Johnson's appearance.
Johnson was arrested and indicted in the cases on July 25. Police said since his arrest, additional samples of his DNA have been collected in accordance with signed search warrants. Johnson was freed on July 26 after posting a $50,000 bond. It's not clear if he has obtained an attorney.
Denton Police said the arrest was made possible by the department's Evidence Management Unit's use of a grant from the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), which provides funds to police departments working to solve sexual assault cold cases. Denton Police is one of five agencies in Texas that have applied for and received the SAKI grant.
