Indiana man arrested in 35-year-old 'cold case' sex assault of two girls in Exeter

An Indiana man has been arrested and charged in the 35-year-old "cold case" knifepoint sexual assault of two girls, ages 11 and 13, the Rhode Island State Police announced late Wednesday night.

Frank Joseph Thies, 66, of Terre Haute, Indiana, was arrested Oct. 19 in Indiana on one count of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of first-degree child molestation, State Police Supt. Col. Darnell S. Weaver announced.

He was extradited to Rhode Island, where he appeared before Judge Melanie Wilk Thunberg in Superior Court Thursday morning and was ordered held pending a bail hearing.

"This is essentially every parent's worst nightmare," prosecutor Timothy G. Healy said in court.

Thies was linked to the case through DNA, according to the state police. He served in the Marines and Navy but did not live in Rhode Island. He had reported to the Naval Justice School in Newport the day before the assault, the police said.

On April 12, 1987, the Rhode Island State Police were called to a home to investigate a report that an 11-year-old girl and a 13-year-old girl had been forced into the woods at knifepoint and sexually assaulted by an adult male, the police said.

According to Journal reports at the time, the girls had been playing tennis in the street when the man approached them. Although the suspect was walking, the police believed he had a car nearby, the police said at the time.

The assault happened in a rural, wooded area near one of the girl’s home in Exeter, the police said. Through a "large-scale" investigation, physical evidence was developed to include the DNA profile of the suspected offender from a sexual assault evidence collection kit, the police said.

The evidence was preserved, and through the years it was used to compare with the profiles of several possible suspects, who were then excluded as contributors to the DNA sample, the police said. The investigation turned into a cold case because of a lack of new leads, the police said.

In 2005, with the advent of the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), an attempt to solve the case was made, but no new leads were generated. According to the U.S. Justice Department, CODIS is a national DNA information repository maintained by the FBI that allows state and local crime laboratories to store and compare DNA profiles from crime-scene evidence and convicted offenders. Once entered into CODIS, the unknown DNA sample was continuously searched against new entries into the database, the state police said.

In 2019, state police Special Victims Unit detectives reopened the case. The state police Forensic Services Unit with the Rhode Island Department of Health re-examined the physical evidence and researched and initiated a request for genetic genealogy, the police said.

In August of 2022, SVU detectives received a lead that the suspect was probably one of three brothers from Erie County, New York. All had served in the military. Detectives worked with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and learned that the oldest brother, Frank Thies, with no previous known ties to Rhode Island, had reported to the Naval Justice School in Newport the day before the assault, the police said.

With the help of the Indiana State Police, a discarded sample of Thies’s DNA was obtained, tested and found to match the DNA profile of the suspected offender. The case was presented to a Rhode Island statewide grand jury, and he was indicted. The Indiana State Police took Frank Thies into custody as a fugitive from justice and held him pending extradition to Rhode Island.

Thies is believed to have lived in New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Washington D.C., Texas, Italy and the United Kingdom. The state police ask anyone with information about Thies to contact the Special Victims Unit at (401) 764-5394.

With reports from Journal Staff Writer Mark Reynolds

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Indiana man charged in Rhode Island sexual assault cold case from 1987