Genealogy Test And Covert Lunch Dates Led To Arrest Of Suspected Serial Rapist After Two Decades

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John Daly III [Photo courtesy Mesa Police Department]

The recent arrest of the man suspected of being the East Valley Rapist was not triggered by a tip or a previously unrecognized piece of evidence. Instead, it came about after a Mesa police detective sent a nearly 20-year-old DNA profile to a genealogy company.

John Joseph Daly III was taken into custody May 4 near Sierra Vista on suspicion of raping or assaulting three women in the Mesa – Gilbert area between 1999 to 2001. He has also now been indicted by a Cochise County grand jury with the non-sexual assault of a Bisbee woman in her apartment in October 2001 and is the main suspect in four other assaults in Maricopa County.

Daly, 57, worked for the U.S. Border Patrol for 20 years, retiring in 2019. His most recent assignment was as a supervisory agent based in Douglas. A review of Daly’s residential history showed he lived near each of the assaults at the time they occurred, according to testimony last week by Mesa Det. Derek Samuel, the lead investigator in the cases.

Samuel’s testimony came during a May 13 hearing on a request by Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre for Judge Timothy Dickerson to order Daly held in jail without bond pending trial in the 2001 Bisbee assault. McIntyre is prosecuting the case himself.

Among those who testified at the hearing was one of Daly’s former USBP co-workers who had also sold Daly several guns. The former co-worker used their past acquaintance as an excuse to invite Daly to lunch a few months ago.

Unknown to Daly, the former co-worker was part of a multi-agency taskforce brought together to identify and arrest the East Valley Rapist. As the men enjoyed their meal, investigators were waiting to collect Daly’s silverware and glasses for DNA testing.

That testing would later confirm a genealogy report Samuel received from Bode Technologies, a forensic company that specializes in DNA analysis. Samuel testified he was assigned the cold case file a few years ago and had asked the company last fall to run the East Valley Rapist’s DNA profile through its database.

The resultant report pointed directly to Daly in February, Samuel testified. Another lunch was later scheduled between Daly and his former co-worker at which the taskforce attempted to take Daly into custody while a drone watched the scene from above.

When Daly did not follow commands, he was hit with a Taser charge and was then struck with a shotgun propelled “bean bag” projectile which dropped him to the ground. He was arrested without further incident.

Among the items seized from Daly’s residence in Hereford were 279 firearms. Detectives also found a clipping of a May 2002 newspaper article in a box next to a chair in Daly’s living room during a court-authorized search.

The article reported that then-county attorney Chris Roll had announced officials matched DNA from saliva found on a coffee mug at the October 2001 crime scene in Bisbee to saliva found at the scene of two sexual assaults in the Mesa – Gilbert area from November 1999 and November 2000.

The bail hearing also revealed more details about the Oct. 20, 2001 assault in Bisbee when police responded to the Gym Club Apartments after a 911 call from a male resident reporting that one of his female neighbors had been attacked.

The 25-year-old woman reported awaking to find a man in her apartment. The man strangled her in and out of consciousness and beat her, she said. The woman also told officers the man allowed her to have a drink of water and she thought he may have taken a drink as well.

Eventually the woman was able to peek under a blindfold well enough to find her way to the door where she ran naked into the stairwell and screamed for help. Evidence was seized from the woman’s apartment and sent to the state’s crime lab for analysis.

A few weeks later, a Bisbee officer publicly commented on the woman’s past mental health issues and said there was no evidence the woman had been choked or beaten. The officer also said the woman’s statement about having her hands bound was unsubstantiated.

The officer’s statements to the media cast doubt on the woman’s report, even though the officer knew at that time that crime lab testing had not even begun. Parts of the officer’s 2001 statement are contradicted by the official police report, which Bisbee Sgt. Carlos Moreno testified at last week’s bail hearing mentioned the presence of tape, bruising, and cuts.

Aldo during the hearing, the Bisbee victim described her reaction to a recent visit from detectives nearly 20 years after she was attacked. She recalled being “overwhelmed” by the news that a suspect had been identified in the incident she said has cast dark shadows “over half of my life.”

The woman also described the everyday impact of her long-term “reality-based fear” that includes often avoiding being out at night and not parking too far away from a store. She also expressed a deep fear that Daly would try to find and harm her or the other victims if released from jail to await trial.

Her comments were directed to the judge, who had to decide whether to order Daly held without bail or if there were pretrial release conditions which could ensure the protection of the victim, any witnesses, and the public.

In the end, Dickerson ordered the continuance of the no-bail order imposed when Daly was arrested May 4 in connection to three of the eight East Valley cases, although the bail order is officially based on the 2001 Bisbee assault being prosecuted in Cochise County.

For now, Samuel and other detectives are awaiting various crime lab testing, including fingerprint comparison, in hopes of formally tying Daly to the other four assaults for which he is the lone suspect. Investigators are also looking into whether Daly used the 2002 news article about the saliva DNA to change his behavior in other assaults.

Among the agencies involved in the investigation are the Bisbee, Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, and Sierra Vista Police Departments, the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, the FBI, the Border Patrol, and the U.S. Marshals Office.