DNA helps net suspect 5 years later

By KATE THAYER - kthayer@kcchronicle.com


ST. CHARLES – Kane County prosecutor Pam Monaco periodically thought about the open 5-year-old St. Charles sexual-assault case, keeping the file on hand in her office.

This week, Monaco saw an arrest in the case. It’s a prime example, she said, of the importance of DNA technology – even if that technology doesn’t always net quick success for law enforcement.

Carlos Martinez Lopez, 24, of Aurora faces aggravated criminal sexual assault, criminal sexual assault, and aggravated criminal sexual-abuse charges in the Dec. 21, 2002, armed attack on a 32-year-old woman in a St. Charles parking lot.

Lopez appeared in court Friday and is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 14 in front of Circuit Judge Timothy Sheldon. He remained in jail on $1 million bail Friday.

Monaco first charged Lopez last year, after a DNA search resulted in a match between him and the attacker. An initial search in 2002 of the state’s DNA database did not turn up a match.

A 2005 felony burglary conviction required Lopez to submit a DNA sample, placing him in a national database, which investigators use to identify unknown suspects through DNA samples.

Convicted felons in Illinois are required to submit DNA samples.

Although investigators had a match last year, police could not find Lopez because he had been deported twice to Mexico.

He returned illegally to Aurora to live with his mother, Monaco said.

In July, Aurora police pulled over Lopez on a traffic violation, when he gave a fake name and birth date. Police then arrested him for obstruction of justice, leading prosecutors to realize that they had found the person that they suspected in the sexual-assault case, Monaco said.

“It’s really exciting,â€