A DNA match from a new computer database has led to the arrest of an imprisoned career criminal on charges he raped an NYU grad student in her West Village apartment almost five years ago, police said yesterday.
The suspect, Roland Johnson, 44, has a record of 36 arrests – 25 of them leading to convictions – since October 1973. He’s spent 19 of the past 24 years behind bars. Two of the convictions were for “violent felonies.”
Under a state-mandated program designed to build a DNA computer database of violent felons, Johnson was required to submit a blood sample in July 2001.
Last Jan. 30, authorities learned the DNA contained in Johnson’s blood sample matched the semen from the 1997 rape.