AURORA | Spitting on the ground at an Aurora gas station proved to be the downfall for a recently-convicted rapist.
Jeffrey Ford, 42, was convicted last month of raping a 28-year-old woman at a north Aurora home back in 2009. At a hearing in October, Ford faces a sentence that could keep him behind bars for life.
Police are crediting the dogged work of Aurora police crime analyst Dawn Tollakson for tracking Ford down and eventually linking his DNA to the 2009 attack.
In an email to City Council last week, Aurora police Chief Dan Oates said Tollakson’s work was “A phenomenal example of how a talented and hard-working crime analyst can make a difference in our line of work, as well as the value of DNA.”
Oates said Tollakson has received several awards for her work on the Ford case.
Ford hasn’t been sentenced yet, but Oates said the conviction was an important one.
“We can now rest a little easier that he has been convicted,” Oates said.
According to police, investigators had several clues after the 2009 assault, but not quite enough to identify a suspect.
The victim told police she had been raped at a home in the 1700 block of Akron Street by a light-skinned black male. The man drove away in a reddish SUV, the woman said, and she was able to provide detectives with a partial license plate. The rapist also left DNA at the scene.
From there, Tollakson went to work.
The rapist’s DNA didn’t match any suspects in the state’s DNA database, but when Tollakson compared it to a national database, it matched DNA from a 1997 sexual assault in Kansas City, and a 2003 sexual assault in San Francisco.
In both those cases, detectives had DNA, but they didn’t have a name for their suspect.
Tollakson then ran an exhaustive search of police and property records from the Kansas City, San Francisco and Denver areas, trying to narrow down a suspect who lived in each place around the time of the attacks.
That search pointed her to Ford, who not only lived in each place when the attacks occurred, but also drove a red Jeep Grand Cherokee with a license plate that matched the partial plate number the victim in the Aurora case gave police.
That’s a sizeable chunk of evidence, but wasn’t quite enough for police to get a warrant for Ford’s arrest, or for his DNA.
From there, investigators with the Aurora police Fugitive Apprehension and Surveillance Team followed Ford for several days in June 2011.
On one of those days, Ford stopped at an area gas station to fuel up. While there, he spit on the pavement.
When he drove away, investigators scooped up Ford’s saliva and later tested it against the DNA from the three rape cases.
After testing by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, police learned in August 2011 that the DNA matched all three cases.
That month, Ford was arrested in Douglas County and charged with the Aurora rape.
At his trial, Ford’s defense team said the sex with the woman was consensual and that she was a prostitute. Jurors didn’t believe it and convicted Ford of sexual assault. The jury acquitted him of a kidnapping charge, but found him guilty of a patronizing a prostitute, a charge that, oddly, Ford’s defense team had insisted be added.
He is being held in the Adams County Jail without bond and is due in court in October for sentencing.
Police and Adams County prosecutors declined to comment on the case pending Ford’s sentencing.
In Colorado, rape convictions can carry a sentence of up to life in prison.
It wasn’t immediately clear this week if Ford would face charges in the other Kansas City and San Francisco cases as well.
Ford had been arrested several times in Colorado before the 2009 rape case, according to state records. His arrests included a 2007 DUI case in Aurora, a 2008 arrest in Centennial for driving without a license, a 2009 Aurora arrest for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and a 2009 arrest in Parker for assault and menacing.