Arizona man arrested after new DNA analysis in sexual assault cold cases
Jan 3, 2020, 6:30 PM
(Coconino County Sheriff's Office)
PHOENIX – Detectives were able to use advanced DNA analysis to identify an Arizona man as a suspect in two sexual assaults more than 15 years ago, authorities said Friday.
David Louis Slade, 58, was arrested Thursday in connection to the April 2003 sexual assault of an 18-year-old woman in Flagstaff and the July 2004 sexual assault of a young woman in Cedar City, Utah, according to the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office.
In both cases, the victims reported being assaulted by a man who broke into their residences.
DNA evidence from the crime scenes were found to match after they were submitted to a database, but the suspect could not be identified because his DNA wasn’t in the database.
In March 2019, detectives resubmitted the evidence to the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s crime lab for familial DNA analysis.
The DNA was identified as being that of somebody related to two people whose DNA was in the database because they’d been arrested or convicted in other cases.
Detectives used the DNA connection to identify Slade as a suspect in the unsolved sexual assaults and obtained a sample from him last week.
The DPS crime lab then matched Slade’s DNA to the evidence in the 2003 Flagstaff case.
He was arrested Thursday in Eagar on charges of kidnapping, burglary and sexual assault and transferred to the Coconino County Jail in Flagstaff.