EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — A cold case detective’s tenacity has led to an arrest in the 1998 rape of a young teacher in Snohomish County. A 30-year-old Everett man was booked into the county jail on Wednesday for investigation of first-degree rape and first-degree burglary. Sheriff’s spokeswoman Rebecca Hover says the man was 17 at the time of the rape and lived less than a mile from the school where it occurred. The teacher was preparing for summer school inside a portable classroom when she was raped and threatened with a gun.
Forensic evidence collected at the time didn’t lead to any suspects. But last June, Detective Jim Scharf asked a forensic scientist at the Washington State Patrol crime lab to try again. This time a match was found with a man convicted of burglary for a string of Snohomish County break-ins in 2000. He had to submit a DNA sample after that conviction.
