A rape case from 1995 has been solved by Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case detectives.
According to the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office (YCSO), in the early morning of October 18, 1995, a then 36-year-old Prescott woman reported that she had been sexually assaulted by an unknown male in the parking lot of the Pinion Pines bar off Highway 89A in Prescott.
The victim had been with her girlfriends at Pinion Pines that evening and left her vehicle in the parking lot when the group walked to a nearby hotel. At approximately midnight the victim took a taxi back to the Pinion Pines to retrieve her car. As she was opening the driver side door, she was attacked from behind by a strong and unknown male, thrown forcible to the ground, and brutally raped. The victim was only able to give a vague description of the assailant including that he was dark haired, thin, tall and wearing a dark coat that looked like a flight jacket. YCSO detectives were able to retrieve a DNA sample and latent fingerprints but were never able to identify a suspect.
In November 2022, YCSO Cold Case detectives took over the old case and found that the fingerprints were deemed to be of no value but that the DNA has been processed at the time of the assault. However further investigation found that the sample had not been put into the national DNA database, CODIS. The YCSO Cold Case detectives pushed the Arizona State Police to place the DNA profile in CODIS in July 2023 hoping to garner a “hit.” Not long after, CODIS came back identifying the profile as belonging to Gerald Todd Tubbs of Prescott Valley, now 52 years old.
Based on the DNA information and the subsequent interview, YCSO detectives were able to obtain an indictment for Tubbs and place him under arrest for Sexual Assault, and he is now confined to the YCSO County jail.
“The follow through of the volunteer YCSO Cold Case detectives has once again helped with closure for a woman who has been waiting close to 30 years,” said Sheriff David Rhodes. “I cannot overstate how valuable these volunteers are to our agency and I thank them for their hard work bringing justice to this victim.”