Man gets 270-year sentence after pleading no contest to cold cases of rape
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A judge handed down a 270-year sentence to a New Mexico man who pleaded no contest to 15 counts of rape in cases from the 1990s.
In May, Edward Duran pleaded no contest to 15 counts of first-degree criminal sexual penetration, resulting in great bodily harm or great mental anguish.
According to the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office, these crimes happened from 1990 to 1997 when Duran was on probation for an attempted rape in 1989. In all of these crimes, the district attorney’s office said Duran broke into the victims’ apartments, threatened them with a knife and raped them.
During a sentencing hearing Thursday, multiple victims reportedly spoke. According to the district attorney’s office, they described a lifetime of trauma and fear after what happened to them.
The district attorney’s office linked Duran to these cases after getting a federal grant in 2016 to clear the backlog from the state crime lab and hire personnel to handle unsolved cases.
In Duran’s case, law enforcement used family tree databases and genealogy – and even collected a fork he had used at an Albuquerque restaurant – to connect his DNA back to a particular case from 1997.
Court documents show five counts of first-degree criminal sexual penetration from 1992, three counts from 1993, three counts from 1994 and four counts from 1997.
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