Man linked by DNA evidence to 1994 rape case sentenced to 54 years

A man linked by DNA evidence to a 1994 attack on a woman jogging in the bosque was sentenced Thursday to more than five decades in prison.

The case remained unsolved for nearly a decade after the victim died in 2013.

Gilbert Contreras, 59, was identified in 2022 by a decades-old rape kit as the man who attacked and raped the 43-year-old victim.

Prosecutors said the woman was jogging near the Rio Grande Nature Center on Nov. 26, 1994, when Contreras beat her with a rock, tied her with strips of her own clothing and raped her twice.

A 2nd Judicial District Court jury convicted Contreras in November of two counts of sexual criminal penetration and kidnapping.

Judge Courtney Weaks sentenced Contreras on Thursday to 54 years in prison.

Albuquerque police said at the time of Contreras’ arrest that the woman’s rape kit had become part of a backlog of thousands of rape kits that remained untested for years.

In 2016, Tim Keller — then state auditor, now Albuquerque’s mayor — announced that an audit found New Mexico had 5,302 untested rape kits dating to the 1980s.

Two scientific laboratories began testing the kits in 2019, leading to multiple arrests and convictions.

The 1994 case began when a passerby found the woman bloodied and tied up near a bosque trail.

The woman told police she was jogging on a trail when a man attacked her, threatened to kill her and dragged her to an isolated site before raping her.

Decades later, Albuquerque police got a hit in the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, that matched Contreras. Prosecutors said at trial that the decades-old rape kit was found to be a match for Contreras’ DNA.

Subsequent to the 1994 attack, Contreras had been arrested and convicted of robbery, sexual assault, child abuse and aggravated fleeing a law enforcement officer.

In 2012, Contreras was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty in a case where he shot up his own home in Deming to try to frame someone else.