JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- In less than 36 hours, police arrested the man they believed kidnapped and raped a teenage girl at gunpoint. They didn't get any special tips in the case, they just had the perfect DNA match.
21-year-old Matthew Watson was arrested for the attack. Police say he committed the crime, which had an entire neighborhood on the Westside, living in fear.
Watson's DNA was in the Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS. They had his DNA because Watson is a convicted felon.
Marcie Scott is a crime lab analyst for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. She says DNA testing is a great tool for law enforcement.
"It allows us to potentially link cases to one another and also link convicted offenders to unsolved cases," Scott told Action News.
According to the FDLE, as of data collected until December 2008, 655,844 offender profiles were in CODIS. The system helped in 11,155 investigations. Now police were able to solve one more, thanks to DNA testing.
