Paul J. Bieker, 51, will serve 30 years in prison for the 2003 abduction and rape of a teenage girl in McCleary, a Grays Harbor County Superior Court judge ruled Friday.
A jury convicted Bieker last month of first-degree felony rape with deliberate cruelty following a three-day trial.
The case was the first conviction and sentencing resulting from funds the Washington Attorney General’s Office provided for forensic genetic genealogy research to help solve a sexually motivated cold case, according to a news release from the Attorney General’s Office.
“This sends a message to survivors that we will not give up on cold cases,” said Attorney General Bob Ferguson. “My office will continue this initiative to help law enforcement close these cases.”
The Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office first investigated the rape in March 2003. The assailant had abducted the girl, who was then 17 years old, after she parked her car at home in McCleary, according to the initial 2010 arrest warrant. He taped her head and hands then bound her legs and put her in the trunk of her own car. He then drove her to a remote location where he raped her, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
The assailant then put her back in the car and drove her back to near her home. He told her that if she told anyone about what happened that “her dad would be dead and the house would be burned down and the rest of her life would be miserable,” according to the Attorney General’s Office. He cut the ties from her wrist then left her. She was eventually able to drive herself back to her home.
Her father was at home when she arrived and later told law enforcement officers that the teenager had duct tape on her and nylon wire tied around her ankles, according to the Attorney General’s Office. He cut the ties then she locked the door and closed the windows out of fear that the assailant was watching them.
The teenager told her father what happened and he notified law enforcement.
Police officers examined her and compared genetic evidence to databases available at the time, but found no matches.
As there was no suspect at the time, the county issued an arrest warrant for a “John Doe” and the case went cold, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
In 2020, a detective from the county sheriff’s office approached the Attorney General’s Office requesting funding for forensic genetic genealogical testing of the 2003 crime scene DNA. The Attorney General’s Office agreed to provide the resources and assist the sheriff’s office with the case, according to a news release.
The Attorney General’s Office paid $5,000 to send the crime scene DNA to a private laboratory for genealogical testing.
The Grays Harbor County law enforcement officers sent the assailant’s DNA evidence from the crime scene to DNA Labs International, which outsourced the creation of the DNA profile used for forensic genetic genealogy. DNA Labs International then uploaded that profile into a public database managed by GEDMatch and Family Tree DNA and created family trees. DNA Labs International genealogists provided the names of individuals who were potentially the suspect to Grays Harbor County law enforcement.
One of those names was Bieker, who also lived in McCleary and near the survivor’s home at the time of the rape, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
The main database used by law enforcement, the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), is limited by only having DNA from convicted offenders. Because Bieker had no prior convictions, his information was not in CODIS, according to a news release.
“These details provide an active lead for law enforcement to investigate,” stated the Attorney General’s Office. “Information from a genetic genealogy company does not provide grounds for an arrest by itself. Grays Harbor County law enforcement had to independently match Bieker’s DNA to the evidence collected from the crime scene. Grays Harbor County detectives then followed Bieker and collected a DNA sample after he left it at a public location.”
The Washington State Patrol Crime Lab confirmed the DNA detectives acquired from Beiker was a match to the DNA from the 2003 crime scene. “The match was so solid that a June 15 … motion to the court notes the chances of it not being Bieker were ‘one in 35 quadrillion,’” according to the Attorney General’s Office.
Grays Harbor County detectives arrested Bieker in McCleary on June 15, 2021, and charged him for the 2003 crime, according to KIRO 7 News.
The case was one of three cold cases the Attorney General’s Office’s DNA forensic genetic genealogy program has helped solve, including a 1995 murder in Kitsap County and a case involving violent home invasions and sexual assaults in Pullman in 2003 and 2004, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
The forensic genetic genealogy program has assisted with 23 cold case investigations to date, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
The program is part of the Attorney General’s Office’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, which was first implemented in late 2017 with the goal of clearing the state’s rape kit backlog and improving the state’s response to sexual assault.
Visit https://wasaki.atg.wa.gov/ for more information on the initiative and its associated programs.
