West Bloomfield Township man charged in decades-old sexual assaults in Oakland Twp., Pennsylvania
OAKLAND COUNTY, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) - A West Bloomfield Township man has been charged in the sexual assault of a 22-year-old woman at an Oakland Township golf course in 1999.
Kurt Alan Rillema, 51, was linked to the Oakland Township assault by DNA evidence from a similar assault case at a Penn State University golf course in 2000.
The Oakland County Sheriff's Office Special Investigations Unit worked with police from Penn State and State College, Pa., on leading to Rillema's arrest.
Rillema was arraigned in a Rochester Hills courtroom on first-degree and second-degree criminal sexual conduct charges for the assault. If convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, Rillema faces up to life in prison.
"You have to go really far back in time to build those family trees and figure out who that person could have been," said Dr. Ellen Greytak, director of Bioinformatics at Parabon Nanolabs.
Greytak said going back in time was what needed to be done for the cold case.
"In the end, it's always traditional DNA analysis that does that matching. We just provide a lead," she said.
According to the Oakland County Sheriff's Office, the Oakland Township case occurred on Sept. 6, 1999 at the Twin Lakes Golf Club. In that case, the victim told deputies that an unknown man came through a back employee door of a food stand on the course where she was working. She said the man demanded she takes off her clothes and then sexually assaulted her. DNA evidence was obtained but officials were not able to identify a suspect.
On July 27, 2000, a 19-year-old woman was jogging on a Penn State golf course when a man confronted her with a knife. The man held the knife to her neck and sexually assaulted her. Similar to the Oakland Township case, authorities gathered evidence but could not identify a suspect.
In 2004, the DNA database matched the profile of the Oakland Township and Penn State cases, but authorities had no suspects in either case. As permitted by a state law, evidence from the Pennsylvania case was later destroyed after a certain period of time. However, evidence from the sheriff's office was preserved.
In 2021, evidence from the Oakland Township case was submitted to Virginia-based Parabon Nanolabs for genealogy testing.
Following an extensive search, which included work by both the sheriff's office and Penn State police, as well as tracing genealogy as far back as the 1700s, the search for possible suspects was narrowed down to one of three brothers. Further investigation determined that Rillema, who owns a construction company, was the main suspect. His DNA matched evidence in both cases.
Rillema's charges in Pennsylvania include rape by forcible compulsion. It is not known at this time if he will be extradited to face those charges.
"Victims of violent crimes, like rape, can never forget that terrible moment," said Sheriff Michael Bouchard in a statement. "It is incumbent on us to never give up on finding perpetrators of these crimes and bring them to justice. With new technology and investigative capabilities, sometimes we can close cases that have been open for years if not decades. That is what happened in this case. We will never give up."
Rillema is being held without bond until a probable cause conference on April 27.
