DALE EWERS

hitting her in the head,” Snyder said. He then forced the woman into a closet where he tied her mouth with a shirt and covered her eyes with a dress.

“He proceeded to rape [Perez’s girlfriend]. When he was done, he gave her a towel and told her to wipe herself,” Snyder said.

Ewers was found guilty of first-degree murder, sexual battery with a firearm, kidnapping with a firearm and robbery with a firearm.

Although the first-degree murder charge carries a mandatory life sentence, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez will formally pronounce sentence on Ewers on March 19.

DNA’S PIVOTAL ROLE

The case caught the public’s attention because it was one of only a couple cold homicide investigations — cases that linger because of lack of evidence but do not have a statute of limitations — that detectives given a grant to work on were able to bring to trial.

For decades, detectives said they were stumped by the sharp-dressed man who forced his way into a Miami Beach apartment on Sept. 21, 1990, killed one woman and forever changed the life of another.

By 2010, technology had finally evolved enough, police said, to link Ewers to the crime through DNA.

That year, a Miami Beach detective reviewing the file sent the towel to Miami-Dade’s police crime lab. The semen was linked to Ewers through evidence retained from a case in 2008, when he was convicted of burglary in Massachusetts. The Miami Beach rape victim then picked Ewers out of a lineup.

“DNA doesn’t forget,” Snyder told jurors.

Ewers was arrested in Hallandale Beach a few months before Perez was murdered. He was found hiding in bushes near an apartment complex with a hunting knife and a .32caliber pistol. He pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon and received three years’ probation.

Although Ewers was identified as the Miami Beach attacker in 2010, it took two years to extradite him from Jamaica, where he was deported after the Massachusetts burglary conviction.

TOWEL WAS KEY

In an unusual move, Ewers took the witness stand on Wednesday, mostly rambling on about issues that had little to do with the crime.

Although at one point he told jurors that if detectives could find anything else that linked him to the crimes, jurors should convict him.

During closing arguments Thursday, Ewers’ attorney, Harris Gilbert, tried to convince jurors that Perez’s girlfriend never really got a good look at his client. He told jurors that Ewers’ fingerprints didn’t show up among any of the 97 taken from the apartment after the murder and rape.

As for the towel with the semen, Gilbert said Ewers only lived about a mile from Perez and since neither had a washer or dryer at home, they might have mixed up towels at a common laundromat. He also noted that none of he rape victim’s DNA was found on the towel.

“We’re not disputing crimes occurred,” said Gilbert. “But it’s an identity issue. Ultimately, this case is about a very small piece of towel.”