Philadelphia Daily News
Friday, April 26, 2002

South Carolina DNA does not match Graves'

By NICOLE WEISENSEE EGAN,
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Spartanburg, S.C. police said yesterday DNA tests from Troy Graves did not match those from their unsolved sexual assaults.

"We've got DNA that links five of ours together and it didn't match up," Lt. John Dyas of the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Department said yesterday.

"So we've got a lot of work to do."

Yesterday, the Daily News reported that Dyas was trying to reach Philadelphia police to compare DNA samples. Computer records showed that Graves, 29, lived in Myrtle Beach, S.C. in the mid-1990s.

Eleven women were sexually assaulted in Spartanburg County from 1995 through March 1999 and the method of operation was very similar to that of Graves, who cops now say is the Center City Rapist.

Graves, 29, was arrested earlier this week on charges he sexually assaulted six women in Fort Collins, Colo. last summer. He is also now facing charges in Philadelphia for the 1998 murder of Wharton School student Shannon Schieber, 23, and five other sexual assaults.

DNA tests linked him to those crimes on Wednesday, police said.

Meanwhile, Sgt. Pat Cordell of the Farmington (N.M.) Police Department said he will compare a partial fingerprint he has from a 1996 unsolved sexual assault to that of Graves.

"The fact that we believe he lived here in 1996, just prior to this incident occurring, makes us want to check it out," Cordell said. "With the type of activity he was involved in, we wouldn't want to ignore one from here."

Records show that Graves' mother, Michal, lived in Farmington in 1996, he said. *