A retired U.S. Border Patrol agent indicted on charges of sexually assaulting a Cochise County woman in 2001 and who is purportedly tied by DNA to several other sexual assaults 20 years ago in Maricopa County is now also a defendant in a civil case.
John Joseph Daly III was sued Monday by Jane Doe, the pseudonym for a Bisbee woman Daly is accused of sexually assaulting in October 2001. The woman told police a man entered her apartment while she slept, restrained her before engaging in a physical and sexual assault, and then fled when the woman ran out of the apartment and called to neighbors for help.
Daly, 57, was not charged with the crime until May 2021 when a Mesa Police detective learned Daly’s DNA profile on file with a private genealogy company matched the DNA profile of the suspect in some of the old Maricopa County assaults. The detective then arranged with a USBP employee who knew Daly to surreptitiously obtain a new DNA sample.
Also on Monday, Daly appeared by video from the jail for a brief hearing conducted at the Cochise County Superior Court in the criminal case. The hearing was scheduled to address a defense motion to compel County Attorney Brian McIntyre to release documents related to the two-decade investigation into the Bisbee assault.
Dana Hogle, Daly’s defense attorney, advised Judge Timothy Dickerson that the county attorney’s office recently turned over more than 1000 pages of records, so the motion to compel was now moot. Dickerson agreed, however, to schedule a hearing later this month to hear arguments in another motion Hogle recently filed seeking a redetermination of probable cause.
In the new motion, Hogle alleges Daly was denied “a substantial procedural right” when the case was presented to the Cochise County grand jury in May. Among the defense allegations is that the DNA profile from the 2001 Bisbee assault went missing at some point.
Lynne Cadigan, the Tucson-based attorney serving as Jane Doe’s victim representative in the criminal case also filed the civil case against Daly. The lawsuit seeks damages to be determined at a jury trial.
“Defendant’s actions in trespassing into Plaintiff’s home in the dark of the night, binding her mouth, eyes, feet and hands so she could not move, beating her, sexually assaulting her and strangling her repeatedly was extreme outrageous conduct that caused Plaintiff severe emotional distress and physical injury,” the lawsuit alleges.
Although only Daly is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, the lawsuit alleges the Bisbee Police Department could have done better handling the criminal investigation years ago.
“The police did not appear to believe the Plaintiff’s story, despite her injuries, and the fact she was naked bound and tied looking for help in the hallway of her apartment building. The police tried to convince her it was a boyfriend or someone she knew,” according to the lawsuit.
One challenge facing Jane Doe’s lawsuit against Daly is the length of time that has elapsed since the assault, as Arizona has a statute of limitations for initiating such cases.
“Plaintiff would call the police every year to try to find out who raped and attacked her, but to no avail,” the lawsuit states. “Plaintiff made every effort to determine who had attacked her.”
The lawsuit adds that Jane Doe could not discover the identity of her attacker “as he deliberately concealed his identity during the attack, and she could not bring this action against Defendant until his identity was known. The law enforcement agencies did not take these allegations seriously nor follow up on DNA testing and matching until 2021, despite requests.”
Daly will have 60 days to file an answer to the Jane Doe lawsuit. If the case survives a statute of limitation challenge then any trial might not occur until late 2022 or early 2023.
In the meantime, Daly is being held in the Cochise County jail on a no-bond order issued by Dickerson. No trial date has been set in the criminal case. Additional criminal prosecutions are reportedly planned for some of the Maricopa County cases connected by DNA to Daly.
