Washington Man Arrested After Police Say DNA Links Him to Rapes From Almost 20 Years Ago

A Washington man is being accused of breaking into a pair of homes and raping two women nearly 20 years ago, as police now share that DNA has linked him to the crimes.

Per KREM-TV, Pullman detectives believe they finally solved the cold cases with the arrest of 47-year-old Kenneth Downing, whose bail was set at $5 million after being detained Thursday in North Spokane and pleading not guilty on Friday. Prosecutors say Downing has been at large for 18 years, and was booked at Whitman County Jail after his DNA matched evidence at more than one crime scene.

Downing is being accused of breaking into a home in 2003, brandishing a gun against a woman who was sleeping, and sexually assaulting her three times. The man then took the battery out of her phone and said “he would be back in two months and that he knew people.”

“This is an extremely serious crime, your honor, where [in the] first instance a woman woke up in her bedroom to a man in the house with a gun,” the prosecutor said.

Downing is also being accused of breaking into another home in 2004, tying up one woman, and raping another, in what prosecutors are calling “very serious, very dangerous, very violent crimes.” He was connected to the crimes after the DNA from the scenes was sent to a genealogy database, and as a relative of his sent in DNA to learn about their family history. 

Pullman Police Sgt. Aaron Breshears said the three women whose homes he is accused of breaking into have been notified of his arrest, per CBS, as he faces 13 felony charges and the rest of his life in jail.

“I think that it’s important that after 18 years, our victims here in Pullman now can have some closure and don’t have to worry about this guy running around out there still,” Breshears told the Spokesman Review.