TAMPA, Florida – Tampa Police said a cold arrest was possible because the suspect entered his DNA into a genealogical database, ultimately allowing detectives to match it with a rape that occurred after Gasparilla ago. 14 years old.
Police said it was January 2007 when an unknown man initially offered to help the drunken woman get home to her University of Tampa dorm after Gasparilla. But the woman says that’s where he raped her in the shower, then ran away when her roommate came home.
DNA evidence collected at the time did not reveal any matches and the case went unresolved for years.
In 2020, the case was re-examined to see if genetic genealogy testing could reveal any matches. It took nearly a year, but detectives say Parabon NanoLabs was able to find a possible match after searching DNA databases on GEDmatch and FamilyTree, two services often used by people seeking to trace their ancestry.
The lab has identified Jared T. Vaughn as the possible suspect. A subsequent DNA test in West Virginia, where he now lives, confirmed there was a one in 700 billion chance of a match.
Vaughn, now 44, visited East Road Prison last week. He faces a sexual battery charge.
“It took 14 years for this case to be resolved, but it is something that was important for us and for the victim, to get a closure in this case,” said deputy head of the TPD, Ruben Delgado. “That was the whole idea of this team, to kind of take those cases that haven’t been resolved, to re-energize them, to enter with FDLE, to see what we can do on the technology side, and in this case it was positive and the victim can now have some closure. “