With DNA, police say the Fairmount Park rapist case is ‘solvable’ | 2004

Nearly one year ago, Rebecca Park went out for a Sunday afternoon jog and never came back.

The 30-year-old medical student was slain on a wooded jogging path in a remote corner of Fairmount Park last July 13. Her killer raped and strangled her, and left her, clad only in a sports bra and running shoes, face down in a shallow grave.

Park’s brutal slaying terrified female joggers — especially after the killer had been linked to two other attacks in the park.

And the fear hasn’t gone away.

Because the Fairmount Park Rapist is still out there.

Police say he’s a Latino man who, at the time, wore an earring and a mustache and who was known to ride a purple bicycle. They have his DNA from the Park slaying and another rape in April.

But despite checking out more than 500 tips and DNA-testing some 60 people, investigators still have not gotten anywhere near the guy. Even a $25,275 reward offered by the Daily News and others hasn’t helped.

Will he ever be captured?

“It’s definitely solvable,” said Sgt. Paul Musi, of the Homicide Division, who has worked on the case since the beginning. “This guy can’t help himself. He can’t stop.”

Park’s parents, Sung and Victoria Park, of Olney, Md., declined to be interviewed for this story.

Police said what gives them confidence is the DNA evidence — a tool that in recent years has helped solve many cases that were considered freezing-cold.

DNA — the blueprint for all of our genetic makeup — can be taken from the tiniest scrap of hair, skin, sweat or urine. It can identify someone at a crime scene or rule them out.

DNA from the rapist is on file in state and national DNA banks, which means it gets checked against DNA from other criminals. Police are also checking DNA from similar cases around the country.

“I think the key to this whole case is going to be DNA,” said Lower Makefield Police Chief Kenneth Coluzzi, a former Philly homicide lieutenant. “Somewhere along the line they’re going to get a sample of his DNA either on a crime scene or an arrest. There’s no doubt.”

The chances of finding a match in Park’s slaying could get better soon, since legislators are pushing for more extensive DNA-testing laws in Pennsylvania.

A package of bills passed in the state House in the spring would require DNA evidence from more convicted criminals and would make it easier for law enforcement to get genetic samples from crime suspects.

With more DNA on file, law enforcement could get more “cold hits,” or matches linking criminals to other unsolved crimes.

“It is such an exclusionary and inclusionary investigative tool,” said state Rep. Dennis O’Brien, R-Philadelphia, who sponsored part of the legislation, which still has to go to the state Senate.

One recent investigation that benefited from DNA evidence was the search for the Center City Rapist, which Coluzzi worked on in the late ‘90s. The hunt for the man who crept through window bars and assaulted five women between 1997 and 1999 and who killed Wharton student Shannon Schieber in 1998 stumped cops for years.

In fact, at one point in 1999, former Police Commissioner John Timoney said they were at their “wits’ end.”

Finally in 2001, cops noticed a similar series of rapes in Fort Collins, Colo. They had DNA from the scenes in Philadelphia and in Colorado, so they compared both cases and it matched. Eventually, the evidence led them to Air Force Airman Troy Graves.

Graves is now serving life in prison in Colorado.

“DNA made it solvable,” Coluzzi said.

Another case police thought would never be solved was the 1987 murder of little Heather Coffin. The 10-year-old was raped and strangled in her bedroom in the family’s Frankford home. Her father found her with her nightgown pulled up over her head.

Heather’s death destroyed her family and left police baffled for 16 years.

Last July, police were able to use advanced DNA testing to arrest family friend Raymond Sheehan for the murder.

Sheehan, along with a number of other suspects, had voluntarily given hair samples to police in 1988. But the technology available at the time couldn’t link him to the crime.

So police retested the DNA in federal labs and in Philadelphia’s own lab between 2000 and 2003.

Eventually they made the match.

Sheehan, who had no other criminal record, pleaded guilty to the murder. He said he had been trying to burglarize the home and attacked Heather in a panic when she awoke.

“This DNA has become the greatest asset we have,” Musi said.

And out in Bucks County, police solved a long-dormant case through DNA several years ago. Police there reopened the 1984 murder of 25-year-old Terri Lynn Brooks, who was punched, kicked, suffocated and strangled in the Roy Rogers where she was a manager.

For years it went unsolved, but Bucks County District Attorney Diane Gibbons said that “as DNA [technology] progressed they could test a smaller and smaller sample.”

Gibbons said police had a few specks of skin from under Brooks’ fingernails and a hair that was on her body. It was enough to get a DNA reading of the killer.

During the investigation, Falls Township police zeroed in on Brooks’ fiance, Alfred Scott Keefe. He had long posed as a tragic victim, but police learned that Brooks had been thinking about dumping him.

They didn’t have his DNA, so they dredged a cigarette butt from his trash to see if his DNA matched the killer’s. It did.

Keefe was arrested in 1999 and pleaded guilty to murder a year later.

“It would not have happened but for DNA,” Gibbons said.

As the quest for Park’s killer continues, police are still slogging away with traditional police tactics, checking tips and looking for people who might know the killer. They recently launched an effort in Philadelphia’s Latino communities, asking people if they had any information.

And maybe in the end, it will take a combination of high technology and old-fashioned shoe leather.

But the point is, they’re not giving up. These success stories from the past only make them more confident that they’ll find the killer.

After all, they know his deoxyribonucleic acid.

Can his name be far behind?