Rapes raise questions
By SUSAN LAMPERT SMITH
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial
December 21, 2006
Certainly, it's a relief that police have arrested and charged Antonio Pope with kidnapping and raping two UW-Madison students.
Despite Pope's arrest, troubling questions remain.
Those crimes - involving young women abducted from Observatory Drive near the Lakeshore dormitories on Nov. 29, and from North Carroll Street on Dec. 9 - put the campus into a panic. They gave students already stressed out about final exams an even more menacing worry.
The criminal complaint filed Tuesday against Pope spells out how creepy and similar the crimes were.
In both cases, police say he bound the women, immobilized them inside a large coat, blinded them by pulling a hat over their eyes, drove them to a Fitchburg apartment and raped them. Afterward, he cleaned them off and drove them back, still blinded by the hat, to where they were abducted.
The complaint indicates Pope thought he was pretty darn smart. He told police: "You gotta see my face to say I raped somebody."
Obviously, Pope hasn't watched the crime shows about DNA evidence. Police say he left behind his DNA on one woman's skin and the other's clothing. It matched DNA already on file from his previous felony convictions.
But here's where I'm bothered.
The state Crime Laboratory is getting kudos for "expediting" the case after the second rape. Apparently, after the second rape occurred - under similar circumstances on the same campus - the lab moved the case ahead of the other 1,775 DNA samples waiting to be tested at the lab.
Bingo! The DNA from both victims matched Pope, who lives just south of campus in the Braxton apartments owned by the Madison's Community Development Authority. Police moved in and arrested him. Great police work.
But a little too late for the second victim. The woman raped on Dec. 9 will always have to wonder how her life might be different if there were no backlog at the lab.
In that perfect world, they would have matched the DNA from victim No. 1 to Pope and arrested him before victim No. 2 was kidnapped and raped.
I realize there are as many as 1,775 victims out there waiting for the DNA analysis in their cases to be completed. We have spent $12 million to renovate the crime lab and hire more analysts, and Gov. Jim Doyle has said more is coming in the next state budget. Incoming Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen says it will be a priority for him as well.
But the amount of DNA evidence being collected by police continues to outstrip the ability to analyze it.
Maybe that perfect world - where our high-tech skills are backed with enough money to move quickly - only exists on television crime shows.
Like the second victim, I'll always wonder if we couldn't do better.