A University of Colorado at Boulder police officer聮s tenacity combined with technology from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation converged today in the filing of an arrest warrant for a man suspected of kidnapping and raping a student eight years ago.
A warrant was filed in Boulder County District Court this morning charging Michael Eugene Shreck with the 1990 assault. He is imprisoned at the Limon Correctional Facility on an unrelated charge and was due for parole in January, prior to the end of his current sentence in the year 2000.
The break in the unsolved case involving the sexual assault of a female student came unexpectedly during the on-going investigation into the murder of CU-Boulder student Susannah Chase, who was found bludgeoned near her Spruce Street home in Boulder four days before Christmas last year.
A task force of detectives and police officers from throughout the area met in January in the early stages of the Chase investigation and decided to re-examine old cases for possible crimes that exhibited similar attacks from behind the victim.
"We had two cases that we had solved and this one that was still open," said Lt. Michell (cq) Irving after reviewing the files of the CU Police. "Then I realized we still had the serology results packaged away in the open case and they had never been tested for a DNA profile." Irving decided to send the material to the CBI laboratories for examination and allow modern technology a crack at the 1990 crime.
That attack took place about 3 a.m. on Sunday, April 22, 1990, when the victim was riding her bike back to her apartment after spending the previous day with her mother. While passing the tennis courts and law school she heard running footsteps behind her, and a man grabbed her and threw her to the ground.
Irving said the victim fought her attacker, who overpowered her, stuffed her into the trunk of his automobile, raped her and then left her beside the parking lot. The assailant deeply cut her hand with a knife and repeatedly threatened to kill her.
She later contacted a passer-by who helped her contact police, who took her to the hospital. Tests confirmed the sexual assault, and semen mixed with human blood was recovered from her clothes and body. Those samples were collected by police as evidence and the victim gave a detailed description of her attacker, including his shaggy blonde hair and heavily tattooed arms.
Although police aggressively investigated, checking more than 100 leads, no arrests were made. The case remained unsolved for eight years.
Forensic evidence specialists in 1990 could use blood tests to eliminate suspects, but technology had not yet advanced to the more exact DNA testing stage. Peter Mang, the inspector in charge of investigative support services at the CBI, said the agency began collecting blood samples from offenders as far back as 1988, soon after passage of a law permitting such testing.
"DNA was not being done back then," he said. But in 1993 the Colorado Bureau of Investigation also started collecting DNA samples and building what is considered today to be a comprehensive database of convicted offenders.
Irving, while examining the related cases for the Chase murder investigation, discovered that both major components of the unsolved 1990 case, rape and second-degree kidnapping, were still active. That meant the case could be pursued no matter how much time has passed.
A technician recovered the stored evidence and sent it to the CBI laboratory. Two months ago, Irving received word from CBI analyst Katy Labato of a match on the submitted material 聳 a prisoner named Michael Eugene Shreck, in custody at Limon. He was in prison at the time of the Chase murder.
"This was a cold hit. There was no connection between the crime and this individual," said Mang. "But we put the information in there and, 'bingo,' we got a hit. What had seemed unrelated was now connected."
Shreck, 39, was a Westminster, Colo., resident who worked as a cross-country trucker and had a long criminal record, Irving said. At the time of the April 1990 attack on the Boulder campus, he had been on parole for only two months from a robbery conviction.
When the CBI started doing DNA on casework in July 1994, criminologists brought their database up-to-date by including all of the blood work collected since 1988. Schreck聮s sample was in an early batch and when tested, he became only the 16th person to be registered in the CBI database, said Mang. There are now 5,180 offenders in that file.
After the CBI test match, police obtained a photograph that showed Shreck bore a close resemblance to the description given by the victim, Irving said, including thick tattoos on both arms. Irving located the victim at her current residence out of state, and the woman returned to Colorado in October and is cooperating with the investigators.
The DNA match turned up by the CBI and additional information allowed Irving to obtain the arrest warrant that was filed today. Irving and CU-Boulder Police Cpl. Tim Delaria interviewed Shreck at Limon and will return to the correctional facility on Wednesday to personally serve the arrest warrant.
Shreck will be brought back to the city by Boulder County deputies at a later date for arraignment.