Boston Police Use DNA to Solve Cold Case

Evidence kept for 24 years helped nab a suspect in the brutal sexual assault and strangulation death of a teenage girl, a crime that had remained unsolved since she was found in a vacant lot in Roxbury in 1984, police and sources said.

A revived Boston police cold case unit cracked the case, and yesterday Sultan Omar Chezulu, 60, formerly known as Robert Scott, was arrested in Atlanta for the murder of Yolanda Hernandez, who was 18 when she was killed. Genetic material from the old evidence that predated police DNA tests led to Chezulu, a career criminal.

"Chezulu has been on the run from Yolanda Hernandez' murder for 24 years, six years longer than Yolanda lived on this earth," Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said. "His arrest today is proof that no span of years and no physical distance will ever deter us from bringing a killer to justice."

A source said semen collected from Hernandez's clothing was used to match Chezulu to the crime after the suspect's DNA profile was stored in CODIS, a national database. Chezulu has a criminal history that includes sexual assault and armed robbery, Police Commissioner Edward Davis said. When he was released from jail for the armed robbery, he was required to submit a DNA sample.

But the Hernandez case may not have been reopened and the evidence may not have been re-examined if Davis had not resurrected the department's cold case squad, which combed through evidence in Hernandez's case using the best of the old and new techniques to bring solace to a family that still grieves, Conley said.

"It was truly a multidisciplinary investigation, utilizing the combination of high-technology and old fashioned shoe leather," he said.

Once an elite unit, the cold case squad languished after a series of budget cuts forced the department to focus resources on only the most recent murders. But beginning in March, Davis said the cold case squad would begin examining unsolved murders that happened prior to 2003.

Republished with permission of The Boston Herald.