Photo Courtesy of the Office of Chief Medical Examiner
The Queens DA’s Office submitted evidence from the 1996 rape to the Office of Chief Medical Examiner for DNA analysis.
By Forum Staff
A DNA hit from a crime committed over twenty years ago is responsible for the conviction of a 49-year-old former Far Rockaway resident.
Richard Thomas has been convicted for raping a woman in her Queens home. The man, who was connected to the rape through forensic evidence uncovered by the District Attorney’s DNA Prosecution Unit, and is already serving time in prison for two other rapes.
“The defendant is a serial rapist, who is already serving a 50- year sentence in state prison for sexually assaulting a woman in 1996 and a 12-year-old girl in 2004,” said District Attorney Brown. He noted that the defendant has proven himself as a danger to both women and society and should receive the maximum allowable sentence for the latest conviction.
Thomas last lived on New Haven Avenue in the Far Rockaway and was convicted last week of first-degree rape following a 12-day jury trial and is set for sentencing on December 5, 2016. Thomas faces up to 25 years in prison.
According to trial testimony, the victim was sleeping with her husband inside their Far Rockaway residence on the night of July 28, 1996, when she was awakened by a noise in her bedroom. When she opened her eyes, she saw Thomas standing over her, wearing a mask and armed with a handgun. Thomas told the victim not to look at him or make any noise or he would hurt her. At that moment, the victim’s husband woke up and Thomas told him also not to look at him or he [Thomas] would “blow his head off.” Thomas then forced the victim out of the bed and onto the floor where he forcibly raped her. When Thomas moved off of the victim, he wiped his genitals on the floor rug and on a nearby t-shirt before fleeing.
The DNA Prosecutions Unit at the District Attorney’s office was able to identify previously untested evidence by examining the t-shirt and the rug from the crime scene. Thomas used to wipe himself off after the rape.
A DNA profile was developed based on semen found on the rug, which the DNA databank conclusively matched to Thomas’s DNA profile. This match set in motion the prosecution which ultimately resulted in Thomas being brought to justice for this horrific crime 20 years later,” said District Attorney Brown.
Following his conviction in a 2006 grand larceny case, Thomas was compelled by law to submit a DNA sample to the state databank, which linked him to two other rape cases. In the first, Thomas approached a couple in a vehicle at a Queens intersection in August 1996 and, at gunpoint, ordered them out of the vehicle. After robbing the male victim and locking him in the vehicle’s trunk, Thomas raped the woman and then robbed and locked her in the trunk. Nearly eight years later, Thomas raped and robbed a 12-year-old girl in Far Rockaway as she walked to a school bus stop. Ironically, Thomas was caught for that crime because he had been forced to submit a DNA sample, in part, due to his first victim’s lobbying efforts in June 2006 to have all convicted felons give DNA samples.
