Crime Weekly - S3 Ep169: Crime Weekly News: Pennypack Park Arrest Leads to DNA Breakthrough

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

46 year old Elias Diaz was arrested on Sunday, December 17th after three people were attacked by a man with a large knife on Pennypack Trail in Philadelphia. Now police are saying that DNA from Diaz has tied him to more than one unsolved crime that has haunted the local community for decades. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod 

Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, Stephanie. Happy New Year. We've already talked, but you know. Yeah. 2024, man. It better be good because 2023 was a train wreck of a year.

The worst year of my life. I'm so ready for a fresh start. Wow. Yeah, it was hot. It was tough. I'm going to start this episode off. It was tough. Listen, I'm actually very grateful for a new year, year obviously a new opportunity to continue to grow as a person

professionally whatever personally but i am very grateful for 2023 it was a very it was a tough year but it was also a year of growth i think for you and i especially yeah not only for the podcast but for criminal coffee we've made so many strides in both businesses. And I feel like I'm excited about the opportunities we have coming forward. Haven't seen it yet. So we're recording this to pull back the curtain. We're recording this before the new year. Oh, here you go pulling back the curtain again, man. But I want to because it's going to make more sense. Now, this little time capsule here, I already at this point, when you're watching

this episode, I'm redoing my whole background over Christmas break that when we're off. So I'm excited about that. So really love this background right here. Embrace it, take it all in because it's gone. Cause although I love the soundproofing, I hate this background. So I'm changing it. I already have the supplies off to my left here. I'm looking forward to getting in there and changing everything. So take it all in because come next week when we drop the new Crime Weekly News, hopefully this is done. And if it's not, it's because I just completely slacked during Christmas vacation. So, you know, whatever. Which is possible. Which is possible. And so I'm not going to ask you how your Christmas was, Stephanie, because that would be a lie. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm hoping it's very good for you. I'm going to predict that it will be. Good. That's a good,

that's, see, I like that. I like the positivity. So now to go from a positive thought to a negative piece of news, because that's unfortunately what we do here on Crime Weekly News. Usually we're not here to tell you something good that's happened. But there is a little bit of a silver lining to this because someone's off the street that could commit a future crime. So with that being said, 46-year-old Elias Diaz was arrested on Sunday, December 17th, after three people were attacked by a man with a large knife at Pennypack Trail in Philadelphia. Now police are saying that DNA from Diaz has tied him to at least

one more unsolved crime that has haunted the local community for decades. And this is always great when this happens because we've talked about it before with CODIS. There's certain situations where even though this offender may have committed crimes in the past, they may not have found their DNA at the crime scene, or they've never been arrested on a felony where their DNA would be taken. So they could go out there committing petty theft or whatever, something like that, a simple assault. And police wouldn't even know at that time when they've arrested them, when they book them, that they're responsible for maybe multiple murders. In this case, it looks like DNA that they found from that crime scene has now linked them to other crimes, which is why technology and science and

the advancements in it has been an absolute game changer in the investigations community. And the window of getting away with crimes is getting smaller and smaller. And I really, really like that. Yeah, we know that between DNA surveillance everywhere, cell phones, where you leave an electronic footprint everywhere you go, whoever, who, when you talk to, you can't get away with much these days. It's the older crimes that are unsolved, right? But even those crimes with this new technology, they're coming back and they're catching up to them. Well, police are saying that DNA collected from Diaz has tied him to more than one unsolved rape case, as well as an unsolved

murder of a young woman who was attacked as she jogged through Fairmont Park on July 13th, 2003. The police commissioner, John Stanford, said, quote, Everything we have at this point leads us to believe that Mr. Diaz is also involved or a person of interest regarding the murder of Rebecca Park, which occurred in July of 2003, as well as possibly two or three other sexual assaults that occurred in Fairmont Park over a period of time, end quote. And I guess when these rapes happened, the person who had committed them wasn't caught, right? So he was given the moniker the Fairmont Park Rapist and everyone in the area, everyone local was like very stressed out about it. People stopped going to the park.

It would just cause a lot of anxiety and stress for the people who lived in that area. Now, the attacks that he was arrested for, those occurred in Pennypack Park, and they happened this past November. On November 22nd, the police say a person was running on a trail when they were approached from behind by a bicyclist who has since been identified as Diaz. And when the runner announced his approach, Diaz became enraged and pulled out a large knife, possibly a machete, and slashed the runner multiple times on his arms and hands. And then on November 24th, so just two days later, a person was walking alone along the same trail, and he was attacked by a man on a bike with a large knife. This person was caught on his right arm and hands. Diaz faces charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault, and other related offenses for these attacks. But then we have to talk about

Rebecca Park. She was a 30-year-old student at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She went missing while running through Fairmont Park in July of 2003. Her body was later found buried under wood and leaves on a steep hillside in the park about 200 feet off the road. And they didn't solve it right away. But in 2003, they used DNA from Park's murder. And then they linked that DNA to two other attacks that happened in that same park that same year. So on April 30th, a 21-year-old jogger in the park was raped. And on October 25th, a 37-year-old woman in that park was the victim of an attempted rape. And then in August of 2007, the person, the Fairmount Park rapist, seemed to move to Pennypack Park. And that's when the Pennypack Park attacks began and a 25-year-old woman was raped

on August 11th. Now, DNA evidence from these attacks were entered into CODIS. And in 2021, police released images that had been created using DNA to show what the suspect might look like. I love this technology. Wasn't it Parabon Labs who kind of started that? Because we talked about it in, what case was it? The college student. It was Faith Hedgepath. Faith Hedgepath. We talked about that in her case because they made a picture of what the suspect would look like based on his DNA profile, which I think is super cool. And then that same DNA was entered into a public database and a family profile for the suspect was built. In April of 2023, the police finally got a name, Elias Diaz, and the first deputy police commissioner, Frank Venor, said,

quote, we had no idea if he was even still living. There was information given to us when we started to search for him and they started searching for him that he was in the area Kensington. Somebody said he overdosed. No one had seen him for a time, so we had no idea where to find him or if he was living at a residence or was unsheltered, end quote. And then he gets arrested for these attacks in the park where he's slashing people with machetes for absolutely no reason. And then they kind of tie two and two together. So it looks like, and this is alleged because once again, he's innocent until proven guilty, and even the police aren't saying for sure, but they do seem confident. It's possible that this person, Elias Diaz, has been responsible for multiple rapes and

at least one murder, right? And I'm sure that he didn't stop there. I'm sure there's many more victims that can be tied to Elias Diaz. And once they start putting all of these pieces together, the list of things that he has done is probably just going to grow. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. It's a great job by law enforcement. And it goes back to where we've come as a investigative organization or society where the preservation of evidence is so critical to solving a case, even if it's not in that moment, right? When we have these crimes, the ability to solve that crime tomorrow or 20 years from now will be largely based on who the original investigator was and whatever crime scene tech cleaned down the crime scene and swiped it down

and checked it for evidence and obviously processed everything and labeled everything and and stored everything appropriately i will tell you that there are cases that as a detective we would break them open, break open the evidence locker and go into them. And evidence that was collected 20, 30 years, maybe in the 80s, we have it. And unfortunately, they use the paper bag when they should have used a plastic bag or wherever the case may be. And it might not even be- Or mislabeled it or whatever. Well, yeah, that makes your job even harder, but it's when they label it correctly, but they just preserve it incorrectly.

And unfortunately, the evidence that would have been on that T-shirt or that pair of pants is now degraded so bad that you can't even use it. And that has happened multiple times to me. And it's such an unfortunate thing where you find that piece of evidence and then find that it wasn't preserved properly. Now, I will say this. Some of that is just a poor job, but a lot of it is lack of knowledge and a lack of understanding of the proper way to preserve evidence. Because in the 70s and 80s, listen, they didn't know. They didn't have a crystal ball and they didn't know the future and what we were going to be able to do with a q-tip you know and a swab of a countertop and that today if you touch that countertop i can tell you years later who it was and how old they were and their genetic makeup

and their familial dna and what they look like what they might look like that's insane yeah do the parabon snapshot they they call it. Yeah. You know, so. We're in like science fiction times now. Right. But now knowing that detectives are being better trained to process a crime scene under the expectation that even if they don't have an immediate suspect at that time, down the road, maybe well after they've retired, there might be something that comes along that can take even a small amount of DNA and process it. Because we're even learning with the amount of the DNA needed, right? Like years ago, there was a certain amount you would need

in order to even process it. Now it's become even less. I know with hair follicles, a lot of them, back in the day, you needed flesh at the root of the hair follicle in order to process it. Now with mitochondrial DNA, you don't even need that. So I can't imagine where we're going to be just even 10 years from now. The technology is evolving so fast. And then you get into artificial intelligence, which I know is a sticky subject for some people. But the reality is if used in the right way, it can be extremely advantageous in solving crime, especially if we're using physical evidence coupled with software. I can't even process or fathom what we might be able to accomplish. But one more thing- It's kind of scary, actually. It's like,

what's going to happen? You just don't know. You don't know. It's kind of scary, actually. It's like, what's going to happen? You just don't know. You don't know. It could be a bad thing, but that's a different conversation for a different day. I always go back to the movie Minority Report. I know, dude. What do they call that? A pre-crime?

The pre-crime. The precogs. Yeah. Great movie. With your boy, Tom Cruise. By the way, for a girl who doesn't like Tom Cruise, you bring up a lot of Tom Cruise movies. I just want to point that out. So, like, yeah, he's got some good movies.

He's got some bangers. Come on. Can we just hear it? I just saw an older interview of him on 2020. It was on TikTok. And he's such a freaking D-bag, man. Like, he just gets so defensive and, like, cringy. He's an artist.

He's not an artist, dude. He's a little boy with a little. Don't talk about Maverick an artist dude he's a little boy with a little maverick that way he's a little boy with a little frail ego he is tiny i can't stand him i cannot stand him oh sorry sorry scientology sorry tom cruise i'm allowed to have my opinion that i can't stand you but yeah he was i love you tom, he was a good actor. I love you, Tom Cruise. He was a good actor. Next thing we know, Derek's going to be at the Scientology Center in LA. No, no. I just want to be in Top Gun 3.

Well, you're not going to be no matter how much you kiss Tom Cruise's ass. Talk about support from a friend. Don't tempt me. I will spend the next year training for that role so I can be on the beach in that scene. Did you see Top Gun? Top Gun? The first one or the second one i saw both yeah what am i like you're such a hypocrite which one nevertheless i rest my case i rest my case i still listen to r kelly's music too does that mean i'm like r kelly's the coolest r kelly give me a job no pathetic anyways anyways you said something earlier that i want to go back to the impact that these crimes have, not only on the victim, not only on their families, but the community.

Of course. And this uneasiness that goes won't happen, knowing that a person who has proven they're capable of such a heinous crime is still out there and hasn't been apprehended is very scary for everybody. So to have some resolution, not only for these victims that may be connected to this crime, but also for that community as a whole to know not only is this person off the street, but also to build some trust in the officers that are in charge of finding these individuals in that area to say,

Hey, congratulations, you did your job. That's what you're supposed to do. Start to gain a little bit more trust, a little bit more faith in the system that. And it looks like they've been doing continuous work on this, by the way,

like it's not like they just filed it away. You know, like they, they, they work consistently. And as new DNA technology came up, they took advantage of it as it did, which I think is admirable for a police force. 100%.

Especially in like the Philadelphia area, because you know they got. They're busy. They got, yeah, they're busy. They're busy out there. So kudos to them. Obviously, like you said, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But we know he did commit at least one crime. Yes, we did.

They have him on for the stabbing. The machete. Yeah. The machete.bing. So the machete, the machete. Exactly. So clearly there's something going on there. Wouldn't be surprised if he's connected to more that we don't even know about. Yeah, this could open Pandora's box where now they start looking at the road case files. And sure enough, the the the M.O. matches something and they find a piece of evidence in that case that they processed

and they're able to take a shirt that was found or a wallet or something. They swab that now because again, it was preserved correctly, hopefully, and they're able to connect that to him as well. So I love seeing this. I love the fact that this is a positive step in the right direction for investigations and knowing that again, in order to get away with a crime, like you said, video surveillance, digital data, forensic data evidence, there's so many angles to go with. There's so many tools in the toolbox these days for detectives that if they're good and they're trained well, they have those items at their disposal and you have to be perfect as a criminal to get away with these crimes these days, which I love. I love it. I'm here for it. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I mean, even if you do get away, like initially, they're just showing, you know, don't get comfortable. Don't ever feel safe. You know, you're the one who knows you committed this crime and you may be walking around for months or years thinking you got away with it, but don't let your guard

down because as this technology develops, we're not stopping. We will find you. Yeah. And even if you don't leave your evidence, your family members better not do any type of genealogical surveys or websites to find out where they're from because we'll still get you. Yeah, exactly. We'll still get you. I love it. Any final words from you? No, that's it. Okay. Well, listen, we're going to dive into it again. Hope everyone had a good holiday, a good new year. We'll be back with a new episode. It'll be part two of our series. At this point, you know, it's Dan Markell. So we'll be back with part two for that Friday. It'll be on YouTube on Sunday. Everyone stay safe out there. Have a good night. Take care.

Bye.