22-05-2025
Teen's sexual assault kit sat untested for 27 years in Alaska. Now, man convicted
Three decades after a 17-year-old girl was sexually assaulted walking home from a friend's house, a man has been convicted, Alaska prosecutors say.
A jury deliberated for two hours and found Ronald Fischer, of Xenia, Ohio, guilty of first-degree sexual assault after a weeklong trial, the State of Alaska Department of Law said in a May 21 Facebook post.
'We are thankful that a jury held Ronald Fischer accountable for this crime,' Assistant Attorney General Erin McCarthy said in the Facebook post. 'We hope the victim and her family can obtain some closure in light of this verdict.'
The sexual assault
As a 17-year-old girl walked home from a friend's house the early morning of Feb. 17, 1995, a man started to follow her, prosecutor said.
He asked her 'where she was going,' 'then grabbed her by her hair and coat,' prosecutors said.
The teenager freed herself from her coat and ran, prosecutors said.
The man, however, grabbed by the hair again and 'dragged her to a fenced area behind a nearby restaurant,' according to prosecutors.
'The man forcibly sexually assaulted her,' prosecutors said.
The teen then ran to a nearby building, the Anchorage Daily News building at the time, and 'asked a mail carrier for help,' according to prosecutors.
The Anchorage Police Department investigated, and a sexual assault kit was collected as evidence, prosecutors said.
It was not submitted for testing, though, and 'no suspect was identified,' prosecutors said.
Kit tested decades later
When the case was reopened in 2022, the 'sexual assault kit was tested as part of the Alaska Capital Project,' prosecutors said.
To address the more than 3,000 untested sexual assault kits across the state found during a 2017 inventory, officials created the Capital Project and the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative Project, according to the Alaska Department of Public Safety.
'These kits spanned three decades, and there were many reasons kits were not submitted for testing over the years,' officials said.
Those include the testing not being needed for the immediate case or an officials' determination that a sexual assault investigation should not proceed for criminal charging, officials said.
'All of these decisions were made based on individual cases, and not necessarily with the potential impact on other cases in mind,' officials said.
The unknown man's DNA from the 1995 case was run in the Combined DNA Index System, 'a computer software program that operates local, state, and national databases of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence, and missing persons,' according to federal prosecutors.
It found Fischer's DNA profile to be a match, state prosecutors said.
Investigators confirmed the match by comparing a DNA sample from Fischer to that of the unknown man, prosecutors said.
The woman from the assault was shown a lineup of suspects that included Fischer's photo, prosecutors said.
'She was able to identify him as her assailant nearly three decades after the sexual assault,' according to prosecutors said.
Fischer, who is being held without bail, is scheduled to appear in court Sept. 26, prosecutors said.
Per sentencing laws in place in 1995 pertaining to first-degree sexual assault convictions, Fischer could face up to 30 years in prison, prosecutors said.
