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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Saturday, April 2, 2005

DNA links suspect to sex assault

Advertiser Staff

Police used a DNA sample to link a rape suspect to the sexual assault of an 85-year-old woman in her Kaimuki apartment in March, a police officer's sworn statement filed in District Court shows.

David Baldaino

David M. Baldaino, 37, was charged yesterday with first-degree sexual assault, kidnapping and first-degree burglary. He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in District Court Monday morning.

Baldaino is accused of raping the woman, who is his neighbor and whom he knows personally, according to the affidavit filed Thursday. She is identified as Jane Doe in the document. They both live in the same block on Wai'alae Avenue.

The officer's affidavit did not say how Baldaino knew the victim.

According to the statement:

The detective assigned to the case asked on March 16 that DNA recovered from the rape victim be compared with DNA profiles stored in the federal Convicted Offender Data Base.

The detective was told by a police criminalist this past Tuesday that there was a potential match between a DNA profile obtained from the rape victim and from a convicted sex offender's DNA profile that was labeled as belonging to David Baldaino.

On Wednesday, police got a search warrant and obtained a blood sample from Baldaino.

At 6:40 a.m. Thursday, the detective got word that the DNA found in Baldaino's blood matched the evidence collected from the scene and from the victim on March 12. The detective went to a repair shop in the Punahou area about two hours later and arrested Baldaino.

The affidavit says the victim believes her attacker got into her apartment by slitting the screen next to her kitchen door, pushing the louvers open and reaching his hand into the apartment to unlock the door.

The woman told police she was awakened about 3:50 a.m. by a man who covered her mouth, put a pillow over her face and raped her.

"She told this male (attacker) that she was 85 years old and asked, 'Why are you doing this to me,' " the affidavit states.

The woman said she could not see the attacker's face because he turned off a light she left on when she went to bed, it was dark and the assailant kept forcing her over onto her side.

After the assault, the woman waited for several minutes, checked her apartment to find the intruder had left, and called police.

Court records show that Baldaino was charged on Kaua'i in 1987 with first-degree burglary, third-degree sexual assault and second-degree theft and was placed on probation in 1988 after being convicted of the burglary charge.

In June 1989, Baldaino was indicted on Kaua'i on a charge of first-degree rape, and in October 1989, pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of third-degree sexual assault.

In December 1989, he was sentenced to up to five years in prison, with a court imposed requirement that he serve at least one year and eight months of the sentence before being considered for parole.

In April 1990, Kaua'i prosecutors moved to have Baldaino's probation revoked on the earlier burglary conviction. A Kaua'i judge granted the request and Baldaino was sentenced to a term of up to 10 years for the burglary conviction, court records show.

Baldaino was released on parole in August 1993, but his parole was revoked in October 1994 because he had failed to participate in a required sex offender treatment program, because he had failed to answer questions from his parole officer promptly and truthfully and because he had maintained contact with a minor, according to Hawai'i Paroling Authority records.

He was released from prison and placed on parole again in October 1995 and was released from the Paroling Authority control in October 1999, according to the agency's records.

Police said Thursday that Baldaino is not a suspect in any other sexual assaults, including the assault of another woman in Kaimuki and two assaults in Manoa.

The March 12 assault was one of two within a week's time in which the victim was 70 or older and lived in Kaimuki.

In the second attack, a 72-year-old woman told police that a stranger entered her apartment, pulled a knife and sexually assaulted her.

No arrests have been made in that attack.