Imagine being raped and having the case go unsolved, the evidence left on the shelf.
It's happened to thousands of victims in Washington state, but a new law goes into effect this month requiring all rape kits be tested moving forward. The law also creates a committee to look at how to handle old rape kits sitting in storage.
There's one police department that isn't waiting to act and could be a model for others to follow.
Tacoma obtained a federal grant four years ago to go after serial rapists and serial killers. The grant from the National Institute of Justice pays for DNA testing and overtime hours for detectives to work cases.
Det. Lindsey Wade, 40, took KING 5 into the Cold Case Library at the Tacoma Police Department, where binders full of old cases fill bookcases floor to ceiling.
"These cases are just screaming for attention, they need to be pulled of the shelf, looked at with a new set of eyes," Wade said.
Whether it was a child abducted 35 years ago, or a woman raped by a stranger, Wade never gives up hope of finding the person who did it.
As a mother herself, she feels especially drawn to unsolved cases involving child victims.
"If it was my daughter, I would never give up," she said.
That's her passion: Tracking down predators who rape and sometimes kill because with every victim there's a family desperate to find out what happened.
"I get calls from family members all the time, can you look at my case again, my daughter's case again," she said.
Those calls motivated Wade to tackle a detective's toughest job—digging through cold case files, searching for overlooked evidence, especially DNA.
"Other than identical twins, no one has the same DNA profile. So if your DNA shows up at a crime scene or in a rape kit, then you have some explaining to do," Wade said.
In many cases the DNA was either never tested, or it was tested at a time when the technology wasn't as mature. Tests today are more accurate and can analyze smaller traces of genetic material.
One of the first cases Wade was determined to solve was a Pierce County case from 1995—the rape of a 9-year-old girl.
A man had lured the child to his car as she was walking to her school bus stop in Buckley.
"He grabbed her, threw her into the vehicle, tied her up and drove her 30 miles to a wooded area where she was sexually assaulted brutally and left in the woods," Wade said.
The child survived the attack and helped police create a sketch of the offender, but there were no arrests and the case grew cold.
But as Wade reviewed the case, she was startled to see that the rape kit had never been sent to the lab for processing.
She made a trip to the Pierce County Property Room where rape kits are held in cold storage for Tacoma and Pierce County cases. She was skeptical she would find what she needed among some 2,000 rape kits being held in evidence. But there it was, sitting on the shelf.
"It had been maintained. Given how old it was, 17 years after the fact. I was just ecstatic that the kit was still there," she said.
Wade had the kit sent to the Washington State Patrol Crime Labs where scientists identified a DNA profile and entered it into CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), a national database.
There was a hit. Wade had her suspect. And not just any suspect.
The DNA was from Donald Victor Schneider, a man Wade had investigated and sent to prison in 2004. When she found out Schneider was responsible for the 1995 child rape, she said, "I about fell out of my chair. I couldn't believe it!"
Wade says he'd never even been considered a suspect back in 1995.
"He was never on a police report, he was never documented to own the type of vehicle that was used. He just was not on the radar at all," she said.
Schneider was already in prison--for kidnapping and raping a woman in 2007.
"He was brought back to Pierce Co., pled guilty and is now serving his second life sentence," Wade said.
Even though Schneider was locked up, Wade says solving the case was extremely important for the victim of the 1995 rape. For nearly two decades she'd lived in fear. Now she felt safe.
"The offender is not out walking the street. She's never going to see him again. And he's never going to hurt anybody else," Wade said.
That success encouraged Wade to look at more cases and at more of the evidence in the Pierce County Property Room.
Even though some of the rape kits have been sitting on the shelves for decades, the DNA has been preserved – thanks to being stored in refrigerated evidence lockers.
Wade sent dozens more rape kits to the lab--and got back DNA profiles for 20 possible suspect. Fourteen matched convicted offenders already in CODIS for other crimes.
One of them was Andre Jones Taylor--a registered sex offender in prison for trying to kidnap a woman off a street in 2012. DNA hits tied him to two unsolved cases from 9 years earlier: The rape of a woman in McKinley Park in July 2003, and the rape of a woman who was walking home along Yakima Avenue four months later.
Taylor is now charged with both rapes and the cases are set for trial in August.
And Wade's not finished. Every rape kit in the storage room, every binder in the cold case library holds someone's story. She never gives up hope that she can help write the final chapter.
"It's hard every time a family member calls to tell them 'I got nothing for you, I got nothing," she said. "When you do get that positive result being able to call that family member and tell them we've solved it is just so rewarding."
SIDEBAR: It was a Tacoma homicide detective who now works for the Pierce County Prosecutor's Office who applied for the $225,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice. Investigator Gene Miller says it took four tries to win the grant. The money was earmarked for the review of old rape and homicide cases that were serial in nature. In addition to solving cold case rapes, Miller says the grant helped the Tacoma Police Department solve 24 homicides.
Watch Linda Byron's previous stories on rape kits:
