Kentucky State Police, Louisville Metro Police Department Solve 2005 Sexual Assault Cold Case Using DNA
FRANKFORT, Ky. (Dec. 5, 2024) – After almost two decades, today, the Kentucky State Police (KSP) Sexual Assault Kit Initiative investigative team and the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) announced that a sexual assault cold case from 2005 involving a 17-year-old from Jefferson County has been solved.
On Jan. 11, 2005, the female victim reported to LMPD that she had been kidnapped at gunpoint and raped. DNA evidence from the victim’s sexual assault kit, also known as a rape kit, was entered into the Combined DNA Index System, but no match was identified.
Through grant funding received by the U.S. Department of Justice, KSP and LMPD were able to able to conduct additional testing on DNA obtained from Robrico English, 47, which was identified as a match, and he was arrested and charged with kidnapping and rape. English is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing Dec. 11. He is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence for a first-degree robbery conviction from 2019.
“KSP and our LMPD partners never gave up on seeking justice in this case,” said KSP SAKI Investigator Ben Wolcott. “Today’s announcement speaks to the unending commitment to deliver justice to victims of sexual assault, even if that justice happens decades after the crime occurred. Delayed justice is still justice served.”
In July 2021, the KSP Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) investigative team was formed after the U.S. Department of Justice awarded $1.5 million to the commonwealth to leverage existing investigative resources within the KSP Crime Lab by transitioning investigators and a criminal intelligence analyst from the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General to KSP. In October of last year, Gov. Beshear announced that an additional $2.5 million from the U.S. Department of Justice had been awarded to the KSP SAKI investigative team to enhance its critical work by hiring additional personnel dedicated to testing sexual assault kits and improving sexual assault data collection to better identify predators. This funding was the second-largest award in the history of the commonwealth from the department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance.
For more information on the commonwealth’s commitment to holding offenders accountable and obtaining justice for victims, click here and here.
If you are a victim or know someone who is a victim of sexual violence, no matter when the violence took place, please contact one of Kentucky’s 13 programs supporting all survivors of sexual assault. For more information please visit, Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs or contact one of Kentucky State Police’s post locations.
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