A 55-year-old man implicated in a decades-old sexual assault case in Ventura County has been connected to and charged in four Arizona cold cases, officials announced.
The county’s case dates back to 1994 when a victim was reportedly attacked by Abraham Ramirez and managed to escape, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
A sexual assault kit was collected at that time, but the case was later dropped because of insufficient evidence.
Forensic work was recently conducted on the kit as part of the Ventura County Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, with a DNA match coming back to Ramirez, authorities said. His profile was loaded into the Combined DNA Index System by the Ventura County Crime Lab, which quickly linked the 55-year-old to four unsolved cases in Phoenix between 1998 and 2013.
Ramirez has since been indicted on 11 counts of sexual assault and kidnapping in Maricopa County Superior Court, the VCDA’s Office noted.
The sexual assault testing kit initiative was launched in 2022 with the aim of testing every single sexual assault kit for the presence of DNA to aid in the investigation of unsolved cases.
Victims of past sexual assault can also use the initiative’s website to access support services including free counseling or to find out the status of their sexual assault kit.
The program is funded in part by grants from the U.S. Department of Justice along with funding from Ventura County.
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