http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascit ... 616465.htm

Posted on Wed, Sep. 27, 2006

Charge is filed in 2001 rape
DNA evidence is cited after arrest in an attack on a pregnant woman.
BY JOE LAMBE
The Kansas City Star

Prosecutors on Tuesday cited DNA evidence in charging a Kansas City man with the 2001 rape of a woman who was six months pregnant.

Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders credited the arrest to a law change two years ago that added all felons to the state’s DNA database of criminals.

Leandro Rodriquez Dearmas, 43, was arrested Monday after DNA testing last month matched semen from the crime with his DNA.

State authorities took his genetic markers because he had Missouri convictions for drug trafficking and resisting arrest — crimes that did not result in DNA samples before the law change. Dearmas, who has more than a dozen listed aliases, also has 1980s Wisconsin convictions for sexual assault and receiving stolen property.

He is from Cuba and may be in the country illegally, prosecutors said.

“We think he should serve out the rest of his life in the Missouri Department of Corrections,” Sanders said at a news conference.

Dearmas was charged Tuesday with rape and attempted sodomy and is being held. Bail was set at $500,000. Sanders said Dearmas lived in Kansas City with his family and had no job or obvious means of support.

“Until he was picked up in a cold case,” Sanders said, “he was living amongst us.”

According to court records:

On July 4, 2001, a 20-year-old woman on the 5300 block of the Paseo awoke and found a man in her house. He threw a robe over her head and said he would kill her if she saw his face. He attempted to sodomize her and then raped her. Then he told her he had been watching her and thought she was sexy.

The victim later delivered her child and is now living elsewhere, Sanders said.


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To reach Joe Lambe, call (816) 234-4314 or send e-mail to jlambe@kcstar.com.