Police: DNA resolves cold case

California convict charged in 1995 sexual assault of local woman

A man on the run from California law enforcement sexually assaulted a Las Vegas woman and was caught 27 years later, police revealed in an arrest report released Tuesday.

Errington Fitzpatrick, 49, was formally charged with sexual assault in January after he was released from a California prison and booked in Las Vegas, according to court documents.

An arrest report from the Metropolitan Police Department showed that Fitzpatrick was identified through DNA testing as the suspect in the Oct. 26, 1995, sex assault of a Las Vegas woman.

The woman was interviewed at the time of the assault and in 2021 when the DNA match came back.

Both times she told the same story to police.

The Las Vegas woman got home from work around 6 p.m. and found Fitzpatrick in her kitchen with a gun, she told police. He sexually assaulted her and forced her to shower before he tied the woman and her boyfriend up with bedsheets. The woman said he stole silver dollars, luggage, a 1993 Ford Tempo and a gun from the apartment before fleeing.

“The suspect helped himself to some Dr. Pepper that was in the refrigerator and smoked cigarettes throughout the apartment,” police wrote in the report.

The woman told police she believed the perpetrator was not from Las Vegas because he asked her about the casino chips in her apartment.

At the time, Fitzpatrick was wanted in California in connection with an armed robbery. He was arrested in Chicago on the Los Angeles warrant two days after the Las Vegas assault happened, and police said he had a duffle bag and gun matching the ones stolen in the sexual assault.

Detectives spoke to Fitzpatrick in April 2021 while he was serving time in a San Diego prison. He denied ever being in Las Vegas as an adult.

Fitzpatrick was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on Jan. 14 and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Feb. 16.