Feds had suspect’s DNA during home invasions

Federal authorities acknowledged Tuesday they had a DNA sample from home invasion and rape suspect Delmer Smith III during the months detectives say he attacked numerous women in their homes in a violent crime spree.

But Smith’s DNA had never been entered into the FBI’s DNA databases, so Sarasota authorities did not get a match from DNA they say Smith, 38, left behind in four cases.

FBI spokeswoman Ann Todd said Smith was part of a huge backlog in entering DNA collected from federal prisoners into the databases, which are used regularly by local law enforcement agencies across the nation. Smith was a federal inmate until late 2008 for a 1995 bank robbery.

“The FBI Laboratory has a backlog of offender samples, and Delmer Smith’s DNA sample was part of the backlog,” Todd wrote in an e-mail Tuesday to the Bradenton Herald.

As early as Feb. 22, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office had DNA from a home invasion attack in which detectives say he beat two women in their home, raping one of them. DNA was also found at three similar home invasion attacks, according to reports.

In April, Sarasota authorities announced they had tested DNA samples from two of the attacks, and they came back as being left by the same person. But no match came back from databases.

Without Smith’s DNA in the federal database, Sarasota officials went without a match to the DNA collected in the home invasions. Between Feb. 16 and May 26, officials with the sheriff’s office in Sarasota, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and Bradenton Police Department suspect Smith committed as many as 11 home invasion attacks in both counties.

When Smith went to prison in 1995, the law did not mandate taking DNA from federal convicts. But in 2000, with the enactment of the DNA Backlog Elimination Act, federal authorities began obtaining samples from offenders.

The FBI finally received Smith’s DNA on March 3, 2008, from the prison in Indiana where he was housed, but it was not entered into the database before his release in September 2008, Todd said.

The first break for law enforcement came in August, when Venice police say Smith got into a bar fight in which he beat two men. Police reports say the Aug. 14 fight started when the boyfriend of a woman confronted Smith for videotaping his girlfriend on the dance floor.

Police reports say Smith broke several bones in the man’s face, and also struck a second man. He was arrested on aggravated battery charges, but the victims declined to press charges and Smith was released. But a federal probation officer later determined that Smith violated his bank robbery probation because of the fight.

Venice police then went to the Capri Isles home where Smith’s pregnant girlfriend lives and asked to search the home.

The woman told investigators Smith had called from jail and told her to hide items he had hid in the attic. Officers found a gun owned by Smith and numerous pieces of electronics, including laptop computers in a storage unit nearby.

Many of the laptops turned out to have been reported stolen from homes where the attacks had occurred.