DENTON, Texas — A 53-year-old man has been arrested in Las Vegas and indicted on multiple sexual assault charges after DNA linked him to two cold cases from the 1990s, the Denton Police Department announced.
Denton PD said Marcus Deshaun Johnson was taken into custody with assistance from the Las Vegas Metro Police Department and the FBI.
According to police, in October of 1993, a Denton detective responded to a park in the 2000 block of W. Windsor Drive after a report of a 15-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by an unknown man. She was in the park waiting for members of her cross-country team when the assault happened, police said. No arrest was made.
Four years later, in September of 1997, that same detective responded to a call in that same park after a woman reported she was sexually assaulted by an unknown man while she was on a walk.
Denton PD said after a thorough investigation, all suspect leads went cold.
In 1998, Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab reports indicated that the DNA collected in both sexual assault cases could have been from the same source. Police said a profile was created and entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and was continuously searched since it was entered in 1999.
In 2023, police said a statewide DNA search was conducted and there was a hit on a possible suspect in the criminal justice system. Through those results, a person was identified in the 1993 and 1997 cases.
Denton PD said the person of interest was Johnson, who had been arrested for unrelated warrants in Denton in 1993. Officer then made a connection between suspect description from both sexual assault survivors provided in their initial interviews was “similar to Johnson’s appearance.”
After that discovery, Denton detectives learned Johnson was living in Las Vegas. They reached out to Las Vegas Metro PD and the FBI and obtained a DNA sample from Johnson. After the DNA was analyzed, Johnson’s DNA profile “could not be excluded as a contributor” to the DNA samples collected in the 1993 and 1997 cases, police said.
On June 29, 2023, police said Johnson was indicted on two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and three counts of sexual assault. Since his arrest, police said more samples of Johnson’s DNA have been collected in accordance with signed search warrant.
“After nearly 30 years, a suspect in these two violent cold cases has been identified thanks to the hard work of our current and retired detectives, assistance from partner agencies, cooperation of both survivors, and advances in science and technology,” the Denton Police Department said in a news release.
“This accomplishment was additionally made possible by our Evidence Management Unit’s use of the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) grant, which provides funds to police departments seeking to solve sexual assault cold cases. Denton PD is one of five agencies in Texas that have applied for and received the SAKI grant.”
