Albuquerque man arrested for 1997 rape tied to DNA match
An Albuquerque man has been arrested in a nearly three-decade-old rape case after a DNA match linked him to the assault, Bernalillo County District Attorney Raúl Torrez said Tuesday. The arrest stems from a backlog of untested rape kits that the city of Albuquerque and Albuquerque Police have worked to clear.
Edward Gilbert Duran, 63, was taken into custody Tuesday morning in a 1997 Albuquerque rape case, according to Torrez’s office. Court documents say the attack happened in the early hours of July 7, 1997, when a man walked into a woman’s apartment in northeast Albuquerque through a door that was propped open. The woman told investigators she was held at knifepoint and sexually assaulted.
A sexual assault nurse in Albuquerque examined the victim shortly after the assault and collected DNA evidence. The kit went untested for years, Torrez said.
“That kit sat for years as part of an accumulating rape kit backlog that has impacted the lives of women in this community, across the state of New Mexico and indeed across the country,” Torrez said. “As a result of (recent) screening, the sexual assault that was inflicted on this woman in July of 1997 was then matched and linked to at least seven other unsolved sexual assaults that occurred in the city of Albuquerque in the mid and late 1990’s.”
The male DNA did not match anyone in the federal Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), according to a criminal complaint. Investigators turned to forensic genealogy and submitted the kit to BODE Laboratories, a partner the DA’s office has contracted with to process the backlog.
“It was a result of that testing which lead ultimately to an apprehension and arrest this morning of Edward Gilbert Duran for his involvement in this sexual assault and potentially linking him to at least seven others,” Torrez said.
Once a detective with the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office identified Duran as a suspect based on genealogy data, the detective began surveilling him, according to the criminal complaint. On November 15, 2021, the detective followed Duran to the Samurai Grill and Sushi Bar on Montgomery near Eubank, where Duran was dining with his family. The complaint says the detective collected a fork Duran had left behind on the Teppan table.
“After the family finished their meal and the dessert, they paid the bill and left the restaurant. I then check the area where Edward Duran has been sitting and I observed a fork on the Teppan table directly in front of what Edward Duran had been sitting. I collected this fork with a plastic glove and placed it in a paper bag.”
That passage is from the arrest warrant affidavit for Edward Gilbert Duran, filed December 21, 2021. On December 9, 2021, investigators received a positive match between the 1997 rape kit sample and the fork, according to the DA’s office.
Investigators say Duran’s DNA is also connected to seven other criminal investigations for criminal sexual penetration, with cases said to have occurred in July 1990, August 1992, October 1992, January 1993, July 1993, October 1993, and January 1994.
According to the DA’s office, Duran was previously convicted in 1979 for criminal sexual penetration and aggravated burglary. In 1989, he was accused in an assault with intent to commit a violent felony case and was sentenced in 1991 to six months in jail and two-and-a-half years of probation. The DA’s office says Duran has not been convicted in any other felony cases since 1991.
Torrez said Tuesday his office is now reviewing the seven other cases.
“We need to go back through and first locate all the victims, and we have to go into each investigative file and see what we’re able to charge in terms of, whether it’s a first-degree sexual assault, second-degree, things of that nature,” Torrez said.
