Decades-old Dallas rape cases solved; suspect sentenced to 60 years
Adrian Cortes (Dallas County jail)
DALLAS - A North Texas man will spend the next 60 years in prison for two sexual assaults he committed more than 20 years ago.
The Dallas County District Attorney’s Office said jurors only deliberated for 19 minutes before convicting 61-year-old Adrian Cortes.
They were presented with DNA evidence and heard testimony from two of Cortes’ victims.
"What a powerful display of courage and justice. To hold the man responsible who committed these heinous crimes and to have the women he assaulted aid in that process is simply remarkable," said Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot. "We thank those women for their bravery, strength, and trust in our office that we would see to it Mr. Cortes would pay for his crimes."
The women had waited decades for justice.
The DA’s office said the first sexual assault happened in 1996. A young, pregnant woman was abducted by a man wearing a ski mask as she was walking to the bus stop on her way to work.
He came up from behind her, put a gun to her head, and threatened to kill her if she screamed. He then dragged her to a nearby field and raped her at gunpoint.
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After the suspect fled, the woman went to the hospital. DNA evidence was collected, but it sat untested for about two decades.
A similar thing happened to the second victim in 2001 as she was loading her 3-year-old son into his car seat at their apartment complex.
An unknown man approached her from behind, forced her into the car with a sharp object at her back, and then drove her to an unknown location. He raped her in the car while her son was in the back seat.
The second victim also had a sexual assault examination, but the DNA evidence was never tested.
It wasn’t until 2019 that the DNA evidence from the 2001 case was tested as part of Dallas County’s Sex Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI). Investigators were then able to link the two cases.
They finally got a match after Cortes’ DNA was added to the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database for an unrelated conviction.
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"Our sex assault team remains thankful for the money provided in the SAKI grant that allows this important work to be done. For too long, too many survivors have had to wait for their kits to be tested. Thanks to our SAKI team, we are solving cases and seeking punishments to ensure these criminals don’t spend another second outside prison walls," Creuzot said.
The DA said every single woman in Dallas County deserves justice in sexual assault cases, whether they happened a day ago or decades ago.
The mission of the SAKI program is to go back and right the wrongs of a justice system that failed past survivors of sexual assaults, Creuzot said.