Suspected kidnapper could be serial offender

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

DNA has now positively linked the Jan. 20 suspected kidnapping of 19-year-old Santa Barbara City College student Brianna Denison to the kidnapping and sexual assault of a University of Nevada, Reno, student on Dec. 16, 2007. In the December assault, the victim was taken from outside of her residence, just blocks from where Denison was last seen, assaulted and returned by her abductor to the vicinity of her residence.

Denison disappeared from a friend’s Reno home around 4 a.m. on the morning she was believed to have been kidnapped. Two other women slept undisturbed in the residence, one in a locked bedroom with her dog. Although authorities initially dismissed any relationship between the December kidnapping and Denison’s disappearance, DNA has now confirmed that the same white male was the attacker in both situations, and that the blood found on the pillow on the couch were Denison slept was her blood. This may indicate she had been assaulted while she slept and then silently carried away by her assailant. Attempts to match the offender’s DNA to that in a national DNA data base were unproductive, although most states are behind in the gathering, classifying, and submission of DNA to the national database.

This case is but one more terrible example of the need for an enlarged DNA database in America, one similar to the FBI’s national fingerprint database.

Other local incidents may also be the work of the same believed kidnapper, including the Nov. 30, 2007 fondling of a female student in the same neighborhood, and the Jan. 19 attempted burglary of the earlier Dec. 16 kidnap/assault victim’s residence. That burglary may have been the assailant’s attempt to find and re-victimize his victim from the month before, but when he could not locate her he sought another victim, finding Denison the following morning. Denison has been described as an intelligent, attractive and responsible young woman, whose purse, shoes, cell phone and other personal items were found near the couch on which she slept after a night of partying with friends, suggesting she left wearing only the tank top and sweat pants she wore to bed.

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