In October 2007, a 14-year-old girl was kidnapped while looking for a pay phone in the Beacon Hill section of Seattle and repeatedly raped by her abductor over the next couple of days before escaping. Now, 11 years later, police may have their man—but they may have had him much sooner if there hadn't been a massive backlog in testing a pile of rape kits. KOMO News reports that, among the more than 1,000 kits stockpiled by the Seattle Police Department, was the one that made a DNA match to Darin Bolar at the end of last year, leading to the 52-year-old's arrest on Sept. 26. Bolar, a Level III sex offender, already had a rape conviction under his belt from 25 years ago after assaulting another 14-year-old at a theme park.
In the Beacon Hill case, the suspect had first grabbed the girl and raped her in some nearby bushes, then forced a garden hose into her vagina to try to clear out any evidence of the assault, per police reports. He then allegedly took the girl back to his home, where she was beaten, raped, and made to clean his house for the next two days. She finally said to have escaped while the suspect was at work and another man slept on the couch. She was tested immediately for forensic evidence, but that kit wasn't tested until December 2017. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes that a $3M DOJ grant was given to the state's AG office in 2017 to help start testing the more than 6,400 untested rape kits across Washington. Bolar has been charged with first-degree kidnapping and second-degree rape. (More rape kit stories.)
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