Genealogy database leads to Michigan man’s arrest for 1998 Florida rapes

A Michigan man has been nabbed for two-decade-old rapes in Florida after DNA in the cases matched a distant relative of the now-61-year-old suspect.

Genealogy database GEDmatch linked Robert Brian Thomas to the pair of sexual battery cases in Venice and Indian Rocks Beach in 1998, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told reporters Monday during a press conference.

A 20-year-old victim told police that she was raped and forced to perform oral sex on a nude man who approached her at Indian Rocks Beach on Oct. 8, 1998. The suspect then forced the woman to wash off in the Gulf of Mexico before he fled, Gualtieri said.

DNA evidence was collected from the victim, but no matches were found in national and state databases at the time. Months later, investigators were able to link that genetic material to another 1998 rape that happened in Venice, the sheriff said.

Detectives later identified more than 90 people of interest in two sex attacks, but no arrests were made.

Investigators from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement accepted the cold case as part of its genealogy mapping program in December 2018, allowing police to work backward from an identified family member toward a suspect, Gualtieri said.

A match to a distant relative in Ocala — Thomas’ fourth cousin, who shared an ancestor with him at the “great-great-grandparent level” — was identified in March, narrowing the search to one genetic line in the family, including five possible suspects.

Authorities were able to obtain a DNA sample earlier this month from Thomas, who was living in Niles, Michigan, at the time, but didn’t say how they got it. His DNA matched the genetic material from both rape cases, Gualtieri said.

Once in custody, Thomas told police in Michigan that he either lived in or visited the Florida cities during the time of the reported rapes, but stopped short of implicating himself in the crimes. Thomas was informed that the DNA was linked to the cases before he stopped an interview and asked for an attorney, Gualtieri said.

“Once he was directly confronted, he shut right down,” the sheriff told reporters.

Thomas is awaiting extradition to Florida, Gualtieri said.