DNA, victim help nail serial rapist

Hector Gutierrez, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, February 4, 2006

The 29-year-old sexual assault victim was determined to put another nail in the coffin of serial rapist Bobby Collins.

Collins already faced 540 years in prison in Missouri for rapes he committed in St. Louis. But on Wednesday, Collins was convicted as well of beating and raping the woman in Denver's North Capitol Hill neighborhood more than six years ago.

It didn't take long for the jury to return guilty verdicts against Collins. The jurors saw the DNA evidence and heard from the victim, who returned to Denver to testify.

"When (the jurors) were walking out they gave me a look like, 'Keep your chin up. Don't worry about it. It's over. We got him,' " the victim said Friday.

In 2002, the Denver police crime lab resubmitted a DNA profile of the woman's attacker to the Combined DNA Identification System, or CODIS, which is operated by the FBI. A the break came in 2003.

St. Louis detectives notified their counterparts in Denver that they had captured a serial rapist and informed them he had lived in Denver at one time.

Detectives tested Collins' DNA, which showed he was responsible for the North Capitol Hill rape.

On the eve of the victim's wedding in September 2003, Denver police called her with the news.

"I never gave up hope," she said. "I knew with the technology and everything they have, it doesn't mean it's over. People are still working on it."