BOSTON, Oct. 14, 2015—Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s top courtroom prosecutor today laid out the once-cold case of Lena Bruce, whose murder more than 20 years ago was solved with the help of DNA evidence unavailable when she was found dead in her South End home.

First Assistant District Attorney Patrick Haggan told Suffolk Superior Court Clerk Magistrate Gary Wilson that JAMES WITKOWSKI (D.O.B. 11/27/72) had been identified as a suspect after a DNA match between crime scene evidence and a sample he was ordered to provide in light of two felony convictions.

21-year-old Lena Bruce was murdered in her South End apartment in 1992. Her alleged killer has been ordered held without bail pending trial.

Haggan recommended that Witkowski, most recently of Dorchester but currently incarcerated at the Suffolk County House of Correction, be held without bail pending trial on an indictment charging him with first-degree murder in Bruce’s 1992 sexual assault and fatal suffocation. Wilson granted that request.

Haggan told the court that Bruce’s roommate came home to their Massachusetts Avenue apartment on July 12, 1992, after a weekend away. The roommate discovered Bruce face down on her bed, partially undressed, with her hands tied tightly behind her back with telephone cord. She had been dead for at least 24 hours.

Investigators determined that Bruce had been killed by an intruder who gained access to the apartment through an open window that led directly to a fire escape accessible from the alley behind the building.

The crime scene was processed, as was Bruce’s body, Haggan said, leading to the recovery of two pieces of biological evidence. Criminalists found sperm cells that were still intact, suggesting that they had been left a relatively short period of time prior to her death; they also found skin cells beneath her fingernails.

In 1998, Haggan said, the Boston Police Crime Lab tested both samples and found that they shared the same DNA profile, meaning that they came from a single source. That DNA profile was uploaded to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a database of DNA profiles from unsolved crimes and known offenders. There was no match.

In 2014, Haggan said, Witkowski was charged with a criminal offense in Brockton, violating his probation on a Suffolk County conviction for assault and battery and triggering an 18-month house of correction sentence. Because of prior convictions for possession of a Class B substance with intent to distribute and uttering, he was ordered to provide a DNA sample. His DNA profile was also uploaded to CODIS, leading to a “hit,” or match, in January of this year.

Boston Police detectives re-interviewed witnesses and reviewed the aging case file. Among the evidence they examined was a wallet with no identifying information inside that was found outside the Mass Ave crime scene. Inside the wallet was a slip of paper with a fingerprint individualized to Witkowski’s left thumb. Investigators obtained a confirmatory DNA sample which also proved to be a match with the biological evidence at the scene. In addition to re-interviewing witnesses from the first days of the investigation, detectives interviewed Witkowski on three occasions: in post-Miranda statements, Haggan said, Witkowski acknowledged hanging out near Bruce’s building during the relevant time but denied recognizing her photo and claimed not to remember any sexual encounter with her. He allegedly stated that he drank heavily at the time and suffered from “blackouts.”

After an extensive grand jury investigation that included some 58 physical exhibits, Witkowski was indicted on Oct. 1.

Bruce’s case is one of many older violent crimes in which modern testing brought closure to a once-cold case.

In 2010, a DNA profile extracted from evidence in the 1972 rape and murder of Ellen Rutchick, 23, in her Beacon Street residence matched that of MICHAEL SUMPTER (D.O.B. 9/26/47), whose DNA was taken after his conviction for an unrelated and non-fatal sexual assault. In 2012, evidence from the 1973 sexual assault and homicide of 24-year-old Mary Lee McClain in her Mount Vernon Street apartment was also entered into CODIS and also hit on Sumpter’s profile.

Sumpter died of cancer in 2001.

In 2011, similar testing led investigators to suspect RICHARD STROTHER (D.O.B. 1/29/48) in the 1979 homicide of Daryal Hargett, 29, in the South End and the 1980 homicide of Cheryl Upshaw, 29, in Roxbury. Both women were sexually assaulted and strangled by ligatures inside their homes, which were about two miles from one another, and nearby to the scene of a third similar murder – that of Lois Hood, 31, who was also sexually assaulted and strangled with a ligature in her Roxbury home in 1980. Strother was arrested and tried for Hood’s murder but was acquitted of that crime.

Strother died in 1998. His DNA was not stored in CODIS; rather, he had given a saliva sample for testing in connection with Hood’s murder and a partial DNA profile remained for testing against the evidence in the Hargett and Upshaw homicides, leading to a match.

But prosecutors have also had success in prosecuting living offenders for crimes committed decades ago after successful DNA testing.

One such case was that of SULTAN OMAR CHEZULU (D.O.B. 10/2/48), a.k.a. ROBERT LOUIS SCOTT, convicted in 2010 of first-degree murder for the 1984 sexual assault and beating death of 18-year-old Elsie “Yolanda” Hernandes in a vacant Roxbury lot. Chezulu was convicted of a felony in 2004 and ordered to submit a DNA sample; a few years later, Hernandez’ family asked that investigators review the evidence in an effort to identify her killer. The crime scene evidence was submitted to CODIS and hit on Chezulu’s profile.

In 2012, serial rapist CHARLES H. BROOK, Jr. (D.O.B. 10/3/44) pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the 1989 rape and strangulation of 87-year-old Zahia Salem in her South End apartment. Brook was linked through a DNA match to cigarette butts at the scene of Salem’s murder and skin tissue found beneath her fingernails at autopsy.

Also in 2012, EUGENE SUTTON (D.O.B. 5/16/65) pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the 1989 fatal stabbing of Richard Gleason, 38, in a Dorchester apartment then frequented by drug users. Though Sutton had been a person of interest to the first generation of investigators, it wasn’t until DNA testing linked him to the crime through a bloodstain on the victim’s jacket that the evidence supported criminal charges.

In 2013, a Suffolk Superior Court jury found MICHAEL COKER (D.O.B. 7/3/62) guilty of second-degree murder for the 1988 strangulation of Janet Phinney, 20, in a wooded area near her West Roxbury home. Coker was Phinney’s ex-boyfriend and, though he was a longtime suspect in her homicide, investigators had insufficient evidence to charge him until DNA technology was used to link him to biological evidence recovered from her remains.

Kara Hayes is the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate on the Lena Bruce case. The defendant is represented by attorney Daniel Solomon. He will return to court on Nov. 3.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.