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Ex-Prison Worker Arrested After DNA Evidence Connects Him To Brutal 1990s Rapes, Police Say
“For 19 years we waited to put a face to that DNA profile,” said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert of the arrest of Mark Manteuffel.
A California man who worked for the federal prison system has now been accused of violently raping several women in the early 1990s after new DNA technology linked him to a series of brutal crimes.
Mark Manteuffel was arrested Friday for a string of sexual assaults, which occurred between 1992 and 1994. Police deduced his alleged involvement in at least three crimes through the same DNA testing that resulted in the capture of Golden State Killer suspect Joseph DeAngelo just last year.
The FBI was able to track Manteuffel to his home in Decatur, Georgia through genetic genealogy, explained Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn. He will be extradited to California in the near future, police say.
The arrest occurred only days before the statute of limitations on the crimes was set to expire, according to NBC News.
Manteuffel had previously been employed by the federal Bureau of Prisons and as a law enforcement and criminal justice lecturer at California State University, Sacramento. He retired from his position as an administrator at a correctional facility in Miami, Florida in 2014.
In one of the the attacks, the suspect tased a woman who was out on a jog, then dragged her away and raped her. In other instances, Manteuffel is believed to have waited for female victims to return home before attacking them.
“Without our ability to use DNA and genetic genealogy, we would not have this predator in custody right now. And maybe never would,” Hahn told CBS Sacramento.
Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert discussed the investigators’ and victims’ long wait for justice.
“For 19 years we waited to put a face to that DNA profile,” Schubert said, according to NBC News. “For the victims in this case, they have waited well over two decades to put a face of the man who sexually assaulted them. … Through extraordinary collaboration and persistence, the name, and the face, of that profile has revealed itself.”
Police are now reviewing several other cases from the past that Manteuffel may also be connected to.
Neighbors of Manteuffel's were stunned to hear he'd been linked to such brutal crimes.
“He was known in the neighborhood. He was a quiet guy. You know, but he talked with you. Helpful,” an unnamed neighbor told CBS Sacramento.
