Trial begins for man charged with decades-old rapes

Testimony began Tuesday in a trial likely to test the strength of DNA technology in prosecuting decades-old rape cases.

Edward Gilbert Duran, 65, is charged in the rapes of six Albuquerque women from 1992 to 1997 based on DNA evidence that remained untested for decades.

In the trial that began Tuesday, Duran faces four counts of first-degree criminal sexual penetration in the rapes of two women in 1992 and 1994. No trials have been scheduled in the other four cases.

The trial will focus on DNA evidence tested in recent years as part of an effort to clear a backlog of thousands of untested rape kits that had remained in police evidence storage for years.

The 2nd Judicial District Court trial is expected to continue two weeks before Judge Clara Moran.

Prosecutors told jurors Tuesday that the evidence will show that Duran broke into the homes of two women and raped them.

The evidence collected from the two women became part of a backlog of some 4,500 untested rape kits tested by two scientific laboratories from 2019 to 2021, a prosecutor said in opening statements.

Duran’s attorney, Roberta Yurcic, told jurors that evidence collected decades ago was mishandled and will prove unreliable.

Yurcic drew a contrast between the “credible” testimony jurors will hear from the two alleged rape victims as opposed to the “unreliable” and “untrustworthy” evidence that prosecutors will offer of Duran’s guilt.

“You will hear these two women describe these events in detail,” Yurcic said. “And I believe that you will find their stories to be credible and persuasive.”

The problem with the case is with the DNA evidence and the investigation, she said.

“The evidence will also show failures in the investigation, and because of those errors, this case is fraught with reasons to doubt,” she said.

Prosecutor Lisa Trabaudo told jurors that in both cases, the attacker wore a mask, carried a knife and forced both women to bathe or shower after the attack.

Both the attacks occurred in first-floor apartments in the vicinity of Tramway and Indian School NE, she said.

In the first case, the attacker broke into a woman’s apartment while her husband and children were away, Trabaudo said.

“In the early morning hours of Oct. 6, 1992, the defendant came into her home, came into her bed, where she was alone,” she said. “He dragged her. He threatened her children. He hit her in the face. He told her, while that was going on, that he had been watching her.”

The second case at issue in the trial occurred on Jan. 16, 1994, when a single mother was raped in her apartment. The attack also occurred early in the morning after the attacker entered through a sliding door.

“He told her he had watched her have sex with her fiancé several months before,” Trabaudo said.

As in the 1992 case, the woman was examined at a hospital shortly after the attack and a rape examination was performed.

“That case ended up being part of what we call the rape-kit backlog,” Trabaudo said.

In 2016, Tim Keller — then state auditor, now Albuquerque’s mayor — announced that an audit found New Mexico had 5,302 untested rape kits, which was the highest rate in the nation.

Then-2nd Judicial District Attorney Raúl Torrez, now New Mexico’s attorney general, announced Duran’s arrest in December 2021 in connection with a 1997 rape.

Torrez said his office had hired a contractor, BODE Technology, to use forensic genealogy to test rape kits, matching Duran’s DNA using open-source data from people seeking information about their family trees.

The technique was first used in 2018 when investigators in northern California used it to catch the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, who pleaded guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder in 2020.

Trabaudo said an investigator first identified Duran as a suspect by following him to a restaurant and collecting a fork he had used to test his DNA.

Investigators then obtained a search warrant to perform a cheek swab from Duran that proved to be a near-perfect match to the 1994 rape, she said.

“The match is so high that it excludes anyone else in the world,” Trabaudo told jurors.

But Duran’s attorney argued that the evidence was mishandled and neglected for years, and therefore unreliable.

“Evidence was moved and reshuffled and reinventoried,” Yurcic told jurors. Evidence from multiple cases was stored together in plastic tubs, she said.

The former Albuquerque evidence warehouse flooded, forcing the kits to be “moved, reshuffled, repacked,” she said.

“When they started outsourcing these kits, they were sending multiple kits to these laboratory facilities,” she said, “all in a short period of time.”