Paul Vernon Sullenger - Repeat Sex Offender - Linked to Rape of 81 year old by DNA

DNA evidence has linked a convicted sex offender to the November 2008 rape of an 81-year-old woman


DNA evidence has linked a convicted sex offender to the November 2008 rape of an 81-year-old woman in her Rohnert Park apartment, authorities said.

The city’s Public Safety Department was notified Monday that a DNA sample collected from the rape scene had been matched to a sample in a federal DNA database.

Also, fingerprints left behind during a subsequent visit to her home in June in what appears to have been a foiled attempt at a second assault also matched the suspect, identified as Paul Vernon Sullenger, 45, the Rohnert Park Public Safety Department said.

“We can only speculate about that at this point, but based on the facts — with the information we have now, where we have his DNA from the previous scene or incident and then his fingerprint left there from the June incident — we can only speculate that that’s what he was going to try and do,” detective Sgt. Jeff Nicks said.

Sullenger, whose record includes a 1994 sexual assault case in Houston, lives less than a quarter mile from the 170-unit senior housing complex on Enterprise Drive where the now-82-year-old victim was assaulted, Nicks said.

Authorities allege he broke into her apartment early on the evening of Nov. 2 and assaulted her for about 40 minutes before fleeing through a bedroom window.

On June 20, the same woman was awakened by the sound of barking dogs and, looking out her window, saw a man climbing over the fence from her back courtyard, Nicks said.

When police arrived, she told them some of her patio furniture had been rearranged, so they checked for fingerprints and found one intact, Nicks said.

Sullenger, who is unemployed but worked as a truck driver out of Sebastopol at the time of the two Copeland Creek Apartment incidents, had provided a DNA sample for the federal database upon his conviction in Texas, Nicks said.

He was arrested Thursday and booked into the Sonoma County Jail for suspected rape, burglary, oral copulation with threats and terrorizing, jail personnel said.

Nicks said police obtained a bail enhancement that upped Sullenger’s bail to $500,000.

"25% of all sex offenders re-offend within 15 years"
.........Sarah Tofte