Man faces charge in child sex crime after DNA match found in PERK kit backlog project

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - A 26-year-old Spotsylvania County man became the first person charged in the attorney general’s rape kit backlog project.

Dyron R. Williams faces a charge of carnal knowledge of a child between 13 and 15 years old from an incident in 2012.

Attorney General Mark Herring’s office says Williams was identified after a DNA profile was developed from evidence collected at the scene and then matched in a national database.

Williams was served a warrant for the charge at the Caroline Correctional Unit was he was being held for unrelated charges.

“This is why every single PERK kit needs to be tested every time, and it’s why we’ve been working so hard to eliminate the backlog of untested kits once and for all,” said Herring. “By testing these kits and entering the information into the DNA database we can identify suspects, link crimes by unknown suspects, make our communities safer, and hold perpetrators accountable."

Under Herring’s project, thousands of rape kits from older cases have been tested in the past couple of years.

“I cant even imagine the kind of trauma a survivor goes through and to have additional trauma that their kit hasn’t been tested--I cannot imagine that kind of uncertainty, this shows their Commonwealth stands with them," explained AG Herring.

His office says several dozen additional cases remain under review or investigation by law enforcement agencies around the state.

As a result of the elimination of the pre-2014 untested kit backlog:

• 1,770 kits have been tested
• 568 DNA profiles have been uploaded into CODIS, the national Combined DNA Index System
• 239 “hits” have been sent to law enforcement agencies for further investigation, including 144 “confirmatory hits” that confirmed the identity of a previously known suspect, and 56 hits in cases that had been previously cleared by arrest
• At least 58 cases have been reopened for investigation or are currently under review for potential reopening

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