Investigators have linked three decades-old sexual assaults in Alabama and Colorado to a Jemez Springs man known in New Mexico as the longtime director of the Hummingbird Music Camp for young musicians.
Elliott Higgins, who died in 2014 at age 73, was linked by DNA evidence to two rapes in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, and a third attack in Colorado Springs, said Capt. Jack Kennedy, a detective with the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s office.
The two Alabama rape cases coincided with visits Higgins made to Alabama in 1991 and 2001 for the International Horn Competition, which Higgins founded in 1976, Kennedy said.
An accomplished French horn player, Higgins served as a judge for the music competition at the time of both attacks while the University of Alabama hosted the contests.
The case demonstrates the power of DNA to solve cold-case sexual attacks.
Genetic testing showed that a single man was responsible for all three attacks in Alabama and Colorado spanning 1991 to 2004, Kennedy said Tuesday in a phone interview.
Genetic testing of Higgins’ biological relatives identified him as the attacker with a 99.999% probability, he said.
Investigators have provided their findings to the FBI and law enforcement agencies in communities that have hosted the horn competition dating back to the 1970s, Kennedy said.
So far, Higgins has not been linked with any other sexual assaults, he said.
Messages sent Tuesday to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of New Mexico were not immediately returned.
Higgins’ family established the Hummingbird Music Camp in Jemez Springs in 1959. Higgins later served as director.
Higgins began his career as a horn player for the Albuquerque Symphony at the age of 14, according to his obituary. He later played for the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, the Santa Fe Opera and many other organizations.
A breakthrough in the case came in October 2021 when a private laboratory tested DNA collected from the 1991 rape of a University of Alabama student in Tuscaloosa.
An Alabama news website AL.com reported this month that a man held the 19-year-old college student at knifepoint as she returned home to her off-campus apartment. The man forced her to drive to another location and raped her, the website reported.
DNA taken from a sexual assault kit in the 1991 case matched blood evidence from a 2004 attempted rape in Colorado Springs, Kennedy said.
“We got a lead generated through the genetic genealogy,” Kennedy said. “In this case, it was extremely fruitful.”
In the 2004 case, the attacker was “a little bit older, maybe had some health problems, and produced a handgun,” Kennedy said. “The victim in that case fought him for an extended period of time and actually either busted his lip or nose.”
Blood from the woman’s clothing and carpet matched DNA from the 1991 Tuscaloosa rape kit, he said.
Investigators in Alabama recognized similarities between the Colorado Springs attack and a 2001 rape case in Tuscaloosa, including descriptions and composite drawings of the attacker, Kennedy said.
In the 2001 case, a real estate agent was raped by a man who had arranged by phone to view a property, he said.
Higgins was known to be visiting Tuscaloosa during both the 1991 and 2001 attacks.
“Both of our sexual assaults occurred the week that that competition was in town,” Kennedy said.
