AG, DA charge suspect in separate rape cases
Offices realize evidence destroyed in at least 83 old cases
The state attorney general has revived a four-year-old rape case against an Albuquerque man who on Friday was put on house arrest for a separate, twoyear-old rape case.
The cases emerge as the 2nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office wade through and analyze a backlog of sexual assault cases in Bernalillo County — along with the policies they say have led to the destruction of viable evidence in at least 83 cases.
A suspect in one of those 83 cases is Eli Kronenanker, now 34.
He was 30 at the time in 2013 when a 17-year-old Rio Rancho girl reported that Kronenanker tricked
her into an online and telephone relationship by saying a mutual friend gave him her number, then picked her up from her house and took her to his, where he raped her, according to court documents.
Evidence was taken by police and a doctor and stored for use in a possible case against Kronenanker.
But prosecutors at the time, under former District Attorney Kari Brandenburg, decided the case wasn’t strong enough to pursue, so they dismissed it and the evidence was destroyed.
When Raúl Torrez took over as district attorney in January, he said he was stunned at the backlog in sexual assault cases and organized a team to work through them, prioritizing the most violent or alarming cases. He said he has also changed the evidence storage policy to keep evidence for cases that are still within the statute of limitations.
At about that time, Torrez was attending a function in Civic Plaza when he was approached by a “young woman who was crying and telling me about how her case had been dismissed,” he said Friday.
That woman was the alleged victim at the center of Kronenanker’s 2013 case.
Back at his office, Torrez found her case in the backlog and discovered a second one with Kronenanker as the suspect.
“We realized we had another case,” Torrez said.
That case was launched in 2015 by an Albuquerque woman who told police she was tricked into going to the home of a man who said he was friends with her when they were in elementary school. There, she later told police, she was raped.
Physical evidence was taken by police and a doctor, and she took police to the home where she said the incident happened. It was the same home as in the 2013 case of the Rio Rancho teen, according to prosecutors.
Police began investigating Kronenanker as a suspect and charges were filed in the 2015 case two weeks ago.
Kronenanker appeared before a judge Friday and was released to home arrest.
Also on Friday, investigators with the Attorney General’s Office charged Kronenanker with kidnapping, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, intimidation of a witness and four counts of rape in connection with the 2013 case.
Torrez said he realized his office couldn’t proceed with the case and reached out to the AG’s Office to see if they could take it up.
AG spokesman James Hallinan said they think enough evidence is left to proceed.
“We ... determined that critical evidence was still available,” Hallinan said. “Based on the thorough investigation ... we have made the arrest and intend to present this matter to a Grand Jury.”
He said the office plans to seek pre-trial detention in the case when court reconvenes on Tuesday.
And the office is undertaking an analysis of case data provided by the city of Albuquerque.
“We have already identified in Bernalillo County, sexual assault evidence in 83 separate criminal investigations has been destroyed on claims such as insufficient evidence, all while the cases are within the statute of limitations,” Hallinan said.
Those 83 cases include both charged and uncharged cases.
And since the analysis has just begun, they expect additional viable cases in which evidence has been destroyed.
“The OAG believes that premature destruction of evidence is a statewide crisis for these survivors who deserve justice, and that is why this office has dedicated significant resources to investigating and prosecuting these cases that are falling through the cracks of the criminal justice system,” he said.