Reporter’s Notebook: Kansas was the first state to charge (and screw up) a John Doe warrant

This week’s feature story details the first case in Wyandotte County that was charged against the DNA profile of an unidentified individual, in May 2001. Prosecutors all over the country have used this technique — using a coded DNA profile in lieu of a name on charging documents — in cases where time is constrained by statutes of limitations.

But 10 years before the Wyandotte County case, another Kansas prosecutor paved the way for this new use of DNA profiling. On March 13, 1991, McPherson County’s prosecuting attorney, Ty Kaufman, used DNA to indict a John Doe who was later identified as Douglas Belt.

According to court documents in State v. Belt:

Just after midnight on March 25, 1989, A.H. was taking a shower at her home when an

unidentified man broke into her home, came into the bathroom, grabbed her, told her he had a

knife, and took her to the bedroom. He put duct tape around her head, covering her eyes, and

bound her hands with the tape. He performed oral sex on her, vaginally and anally raped her, and

then left her bound and blindfolded while he escaped.

This same perpetrator was linked to six other sexual assaults in the late ’80s and early ’90s in the Kansas counties of Thomas, Saline, Reno and McPherson.

Kaufman charged John Doe’s forensic profile with “one count of

rape, two counts of aggravated sodomy, one count of aggravated burglary, and one count of

aggravated kidnapping.”

But because this case was the first of its kind in the country, Kaufman made a mistake.