비바카지노 Viva Investigates: Federal funding helping provide answers in sexual assault cold cases
After nearly 20 years of waiting, KSP and LMPD worked together to make an arrest in connection with the 2005 rape of a 17-year-old girl in Louisville.
At the time, DNA evidence from the victim's sexual assault kit was entered into the Combined DNA Index System, but there was no match.
Recently, testing linked 47-year-old Robrico English to the crime.
"It's another piece of evidence in the CODIS mainframe that might help solve other crimes as well," said Detective Trevor Welch, a KSP investigator.
Welch says this crime was solved in part by how fast DNA testing technology is evolving.
"But what you couldn't test a year ago, you might be able to test today," said Welch. "And usually the advancements are, we can use less and less DNA material."
But they couldn't do this testing without funding.
In 2015, a statewide audit found Kentucky had a backlog of more than 3,000 untested rape kits.
Legislators passed a law in 2016 that required DNA samples to be tested.
The state also provided $4.5 million in funding.
Now, Kentucky is one of a handful of states that has cleared its backlog to help provide answers to victims who have spent years waiting.
In July 2021, the KSP Sexual Assault Kit Initiative Investigative Team was formed after the U.S. Department of Justice awarded $1.5 million to the commonwealth.
Last October, the KSP SAKI received an additional $2.5 million from the DOJ to hire more people to test kits and improve sexual assault data collection.
The continued funding allows the state to sustain its work and grow it.
For example, Kentucky requires DNA samples from people convicted of certain felonies.
But sometimes, people fall through the cracks.
"And DNA hasn't been collected," said Welch. "So we're in the process of trying to figure out how many of those there are. And that is hopefully going to be our next avenue."
In 2024, Kentucky legislators enacted House Bill 6, allocating more than $1 million each fiscal year through 2026 to support service contracts for toxicology and DNA equipment and evidence collection kits, according to End the Backlog.