Philadelphia Inquirer
Thursday, April 25, 2002

DNA links Colo. suspect to city rapes and a murder, officials say

By Thomas J. Gibbons Jr., Barbara Boyer and Thomas Ginsberg,
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

AP -- Troy Graves as seen in his 737th Training Group Year Book - November 1999.

Backed by new DNA evidence, authorities said they will charge a Bensalem High dropout tomorrow with the six sexual assaults and the 1998 strangulation of Wharton grad student Shannon Schieber by the Center City rapist.

Moving quickly from manhunt to prosecution, the District Attorney's Office said it will change the name on their arrest warrant filed last year from "John Doe" to Troy Graves, 29, a former resident of Bensalem and Philadelphia who left town in 1999, joined the Air Force and settled down with a new wife in Colorado.

Graves, now in custody in Fort Collins, Colo., was arrested there after police in both cities began cooperating following a string of eight sexual assaults around the Colorado State University campus last summer. Fort Collins authorities said Graves would be charged with at least five of those assaults.

The DNA tests were conducted on evidence taken from all the Philadelphia crime scenes, matched against recent hair, skin and saliva samples from Graves, authorities said.

"It is positive. It is 100 percent complete. There is no doubt," Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said this evening during a hastily arranged news conference.

With Graves' arrest early Tuesday morning, and DNA results today, fears abated further in both cities of a man who had been slipping into homes through unlocked doors and windows, usually in the predawn hours of spring or summer, and attacking young women in their own beds.

"The victims of this assault, plus all of the thousands of women . . . who were worried about their personal safety, at least have some measure of relief," District Attorney Lynne Abraham told reporters.

Still, officials in both cities remained tight-lipped about many details of the investigation and evidence, citing a gag order issued by Colorado Judge C. Edward Stirman.

Authorities and relatives have said Graves was caught based on fingerprint evidence at one crime scene in Fort Collins, and reportedly from an anonymous letter to Fort Collins police linking Graves to several rapes there, and the Schieber killing.

Abraham said there was no guarantee Colorado authorities would agree to extradite Graves to face charges in Philadelphia before being prosecuted there, even though the gravity of a homicide charge probably trumps the sexual assault counts.

"It will be up to the governor of Colorado. . . . I don't want to assume the governor will do what we ask of him," Abraham said.

Dan Hopkins, a spokesman for Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, said the governor "has not yet considered" where Graves should be tried first, adding a formal extradition request had not yet been received.

While fear was dissipating, searching questions were growing about the suspect described by family and others as quiet and conscientious, a 6-foot, hazel-eyed man who had girlfriends and a wife during part of the period the attacks occurred.

The trail of the Center City rapist - who raped four women between June and August 1997, and killed Schieber inside her apartment on May 7, 1998 - had gone cold after his last known attack in Philadelphia, the rape of an 18-year-old University of the Arts student attacked in on Aug. 28, 1999. By then, Graves had left the city. He had enlisted in the Air Force and was eventually posted at Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo., assigned to a nuclear-missile maintenance squadron.

A month after reporting for duty, Graves received a letter of discipline for alleged illegally entering into a female airman's dormitory, said base spokesman Staff Sgt. Kurt Arkenberg. The Air Force decided not to prosecute because lack of evidence, he said.

Otherwise his military record appeared spotless; last month he was promoted from airman first class to senior airman, the equivalent of a corporal.

He was allowed to move off base after marrying a local woman in 2001. Graves and his wife, Amy, moved about 50 miles south to Fort Collins. They lived in a brick duplex near the Colorado State University campus, where most of the next wave of attacks began in May last year.

Police in at least one of the cities where Graves lived, San Antonio, Texas, said today they were reviewing any unsolved sex-crime cases to see whether evidence points to Graves.

Four Philadelphia police investigators, who all have lengthy ties to the Schieber investigation, have been dispatched to Fort Collins: Homicide Division Detectives Jeff Piree and Chuck Boyle spent lengthy periods working the case; and Lt. Thomas McDevitt and Officer Carl Latorre of the Special Victims Unit.

Abraham also has selected two veteran homicide prosecutors, Arlene Fisk and Ed Cameron, to handle any charges that might be filed in Philadelphia, said office spokeswoman Cathie Abookire.

Fisk, 46, had handled portions of Mumia Abu-Jamal's appeals. Cameron, 48, had handled the high-profile conviction of a Southwest Philadelphia man who shot and killed his neighbor in a dispute over shoveled snow.

Abraham's office was preparing a detainer authorizing Colorado to continue holding Graves in custody even if he raises bail, set Tuesday at $1 million.

Graves' arrest followed years of missteps and embarrassments by the Philadelphia police, including a failure to take DNA evidence for nearly a year to see whether the crimes were linked. The city also is being sued by Schieber's family over the failure of officers to force their way into her apartment when they arrived in response to a neighbor's 911 call.

Asked about the lengthy criminal investigation, Abraham said she was "tremendously relieved that it appears that we have the man who is responsible for the cases in Philadelphia."

Marking the arrest their own way today, investigators retired to a chief inspector's office and cracked open a bottle of champagne they said they had been saving for the occasion.

Staff writers Larry Fish, Jacqueline Soteropoulos, Linda K. Harris and Robert Moran contributed to this report.