Breakthrough in cold case as alleged serial rapist arrested via DNA technology
A Man Identified After Two Decades Through DNA Technology
A man who is alleged to have used a learner's car to pick up and sexually assault women and a child has been identified more than two decades after the incidents, thanks to the use of advanced DNA technology. Detectives searched a home in South Kempsey, about 45km from Port Macquarie in New South Wales, around 12:45pm on Wednesday and arrested Robert Wayne Kwan.
The 77-year-old was charged with nine sexual assault offences and several kidnapping charges after his DNA profile was linked to three alleged sexual assaults between 1991 and 2002, covering a distance of 500km.
During a press conference on Thursday, Detective Superintendent Jayne Doherty provided harrowing details of the incidents.
“It’s horrendous,” she said. “He’s a predator. We’ve got him off the streets.”
She described how an 11-year-old girl was allegedly approached about 9:30am on March 16, 1991, in Glendenning by a man and dragged into the passenger seat of his car. He allegedly drove her around before stopping and sexually assaulting her, later dropping her at Mount Druitt Railway Station.
Police said the girl told them she saw a pedal in the passenger’s seat, which made her think that it was a learner driver’s car.
About 1am on February 17, 1996, a 16-year-old girl accepted a lift from an unknown man in Kanahooka, Det Supt Doherty said. When she got in the car, the man allegedly locked all the doors, and she started to fear for her safety.
After driving for some time, he stopped the vehicle and demanded sex. She told him she did not want to have sex with him, and police will allege that he then threatened her life if she did not participate. He allegedly sexually assaulted her a number of times before dropping her in Warrawong.
During the third incident, a 26-year-old woman accepted a lift from an unknown man in Dubbo near the Commercial Hotel in the early hours of December 22, 2002. She had allegedly left the hotel to find a taxi but could not see one and so accepted the offer from the man.
He drove her to Devil’s Hole Reserve, where he allegedly stopped, threatened her, and sexually assaulted her. “He drove her back into town and dumped her out of the car where she was found to be hysterical and reported the sexual assault immediately,” Det Supt Doherty said.
Despite all three alleged victims reporting their ordeals and “thorough” investigations by police, they remained unsolved. Almost 20 years since the third incident, police made an arrest after using forensic technology.
During a review of historic sexual assault matters, launched in 2022, DNA analysis confirmed the three cases were linked by the same male DNA profile. Police then used Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG) – technology that international agencies employed to apprehend the notorious “Golden State Killer” – Joseph James DeAngelo – in California in the United States.
Thousands of DNA markers are analysed to identify familial relationships, even as distant as third or fourth cousins, allowing police to find possible suspects in seemingly unrelated crimes.
Genetic markers are compared against two publicly available genealogy databases which allow police access to the profiles of people who consent to their information being used in solving serious crimes.
For the three historic cases, police identified a close relative of the alleged attacker, leading them to arrest Kwan on the NSW north coast on Wednesday.
“He has not been in trouble for serious offenses. He has not had a DNA sample taken and put on our database, because he’s never had anything more than minor traffic matters,” Det Supt Doherty revealed.
“We’ve managed to utilise DNA that was stored on a commercial database with the permission of the owner of that DNA to identify a family link to this offender. This doesn’t tell us this is your exact person. This says it can be their second cousin, their fourth cousin. We then have to work out who all the other relatives are, who can fit that profile, that same age, at that same time that was in the country, and then we work back from there. This just gives us that little thread. So, four years of painstaking investigation has led us to this.”
Det Supt Doherty said that, from the moment a familial link was established, it took three years until police could knock on Kwan’s door.
During the press conference on Thursday, she was asked about the first alleged victim’s observation that the alleged attacker was driving a learner’s car.
“There were numerous lengthy inquiries made at the time and again at the start of our re-investigation to look at all people that were learner driving instructors around that time in NSW,” Det Supt Doherty said.
“His name had not come up at that point in the initial investigation. However, when we executed the warrant [on Wednesday], we found evidence of him being a learner driver at that time and owning a car similarly described with that pedal in it. We believe he used cars that are linked to him and his family on the other [two] matters.”
On Thursday, Kwan did not apply for bail and is due to return to Kempsey Local Court on April 22.
