Police working decades-old child assault cases as man charged in 1 Erie County crime

Someone was targeting young girls in parts of Erie County and western Ohio.

The perpetrator or perpetrators posed in some cases as a utility worker. In others, the man asked for directions, or to use the phone, according to law enforcement.

It was suspected that, in at least some of the cases, he tracked his young targets by following school buses.

Some of the victims, who ranged in age from 11 to 18, were sexually assaulted. Others managed to fight their attacker off.

Police in two states began to suspect that possibly the same person was involved in many of the attacks. They pooled their resources, brought in the FBI, formed a task force and set up a tip line in an effort to make one or more arrests in the string of 11 incidents that stretched from April 2001 to September 2003.

The effort never paid off.

Until recently.

DNA samples, genealogical analysis and a drink can pulled from the trash in Florida would lead the Pennsylvania State Police earlier this month to identify a former Ohio resident as a suspect in one of the crimes, the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl in Springfield Township in May 2003.

State police DNA links Florida man to 2003 sex assault of 13-year-old Springfield girl

As authorities await the arrival of the man charged in the crime, 61-year-old Florida resident Daniel Danzinger — Erie County District Attorney Elizabeth Hirz said Danzinger waived his extradition to Pennsylvania following his arrest in Fort Myers on Oct. 2 — law enforcement is continuing to pore over the other cases in an effort to solve the decades-old crime spree.

The task force and the tip line are long gone. But investigators are still working the cases with assistance from agencies including the Ohio Attorney General's Office-Cold Case Unit, said Master Trooper Todd Giliberto, criminal investigation assessment officer for state police Troop E, which is based in Lawrence Park Township.

Assault spree hits Ohio, Erie County

The string of attacks that would lead to a multi-agency effort to catch the perpetrator or perpetrators was believed to have started on April 10, 2001, in Lake County, Ohio, a former FBI special agent with the agency's office in Painesville, Ohio, reported to the Erie Times-News in June 2003.

More assaults would occur in 2002, totaling seven teenage girl victims in five Ohio counties — Geauga, Lake, Mahoning, Medina and Summit, the special agent reported.

All of the Ohio attacks were basically the same, the special agent told the Times-News. A man believed to be in his 20s to mid-30s approached a house, usually carrying a clipboard or a package, and would engage in conversation with the girl who answered the door before attacking her.

Investigators said at the time they believed in some of the cases the man found his victims by watching school buses drop off students, and then following the girls home.

Similar incidents were soon reported in Erie County.

Shortly after 3 p.m. on March 11, 2003, an 11-year-old girl answered the door at her Keefer Road home in Fairview Township to find a man wearing coveralls and carrying a clipboard. He said he was looking for a family the girl did not know, state police in Girard reported at the time.

Investigators said the man started asking the girl some personal questions, which they believed was in an effort to determine whether anyone else was at the residence. He then began to assault the girl.

The girl managed to fight the man off, and he ran to his car and fled. She was not injured, but was taken to the hospital as a precautionary measure, state police reported.

On the afternoon of May 6, 2003, a 13-year-old girl had just returned to her West Lake Road home in Springfield Township from school when a man came to the residence and asked the girl for directions to an auto parts store, state police in Girard reported at the time. The man then asked to use the home's telephone before he went inside and sexually assaulted the girl, according to police.

On the early afternoon of June 18, 2003, Erie police were called to a residence on West 35th Street in the city after a 17-year-old girl reported being attacked by an unknown man. Police reported that the man, wearing a dark T-shirt and a baseball cap, opened an unlocked screen door of the residence and grabbed the girl when she went to see who was there. The girl fought the man off and the man ran away, police told the Times-News.

Police said at the time that the accused attacker was suspected of being the same man who reportedly followed a 12-year-old girl as she was walking in her neighborhood near West 40th Street and Ellsworth Avenue in Erie eight days earlier. They also said they suspected the incidents might be connected to the attacks in western Erie County in March and May, and the ones in Ohio.

Community alerted, task force formed

After the 13-year-old was attacked in Springfield Township, state police in Girard alerted area school districts about the incident and the attempted assault of the 11-year-old in Fairview two months earlier.

A task force was formed following the Springfield Township assault after the Erie FBI office took a look at the two western Erie County incidents. The special agent in charge of the office told the Erie Times-News at the time that the agency began checking with other area FBI offices to see if there were any similar incidents, and they found there were in Ohio.

The two-state task force in early June 2003 set up a telephone tip line and a special post office box to collect information from the public that might assist in the assault investigations. Within days, dozens of tips were phoned in that police and FBI in Erie County and Ohio pursued, officials reported.

Things were quiet for much of the summer. Then, in early September 2003, the FBI office in Painesville reported that an 18-year-old was attacked in her Ashtabula County, Ohio, home. She told authorities the man engaged her in conversation, asked if her parents were home, asked to use the phone then forced his way inside, the former Painesville FBI special agent told the Times-News. The 18-year-old managed to fight the man off.

In response to the incident, the Pennsylvania State Police in Erie County issued an alert to the community reminding residents of the still-unsolved rash of attacks as school was about to be in session.

The attacks appeared to have stopped after that, but the investigation didn't.

A Pennsylvania State Police investigator who was involved in the ongoing probe told the Times-News in May 2004 that members of the Ontario Provincial Police would be visiting the area to conduct a "geo-profile," by looking at the locations of the offenses in an effort to determine where a suspect might be living.

The former head of the Erie FBI office also told the Times-News that he planned to discuss the case with the agency's behavioral people in Quantico, Virginia.

By May 2004, the telephone tip line had been taken down. But investigators said the cases were still open and active, and they reminded the community to stay vigilant and to report any suspicious activity to law enforcement.

A break in one case

DNA evidence would ultimately lead the Pennsylvania State Police to charge a suspect, Florida resident Daniel Danzinger, in one of the crimes.

But it would take some time before police were able to identify him.

Among the evidence collected at the Springfield Township residence of the 13-year-old girl who was assaulted in May 2003 was a T-shirt and a wash cloth. Both items were sent to the state police DNA Laboratory in Greensburg, where a DNA profile was developed, state police investigators wrote in the affidavit of probable cause filed with Danzinger's criminal complaint.

But, at the time, state police could not match the profile to any known profiles.

Based on that unknown profile, state police in April 2008 filed charges of burglary, indecent assault, unlawful restraint and simple assault against a John Doe in the incident in Springfield Township magisterial district court as they continued work on connecting the DNA profile to someone.

Years later, the unknown DNA profile was sent to a lab for genetic genealogy analysis. Based on analysis, two male siblings were considered persons of interest, according to the affidavit.

The two males, now living in Florida, were residents of Ohio at the time of the May 2003 assault, investigators wrote.

With the help of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, an address for one of the males was identified in Florida. In January, an agent with the Department of Law Enforcement collected discarded trash from outside of the residence and forwarded to the Pennsylvania State Police. DNA was extracted from an energy drink can found in the trash, and the DNA profile matched the profile from the May 2003 assault evidence, investigators wrote in the affidavit.

State police investigators traveled to Florida in late September and spoke to one of the residents of the address where the trash was pulled. They learned that the person they spoke to did not drink energy drinks, but also learned that Danzinger was the only male who visits the residence, according to information in the affidavit.

That same day, investigators went to Danzinger's Florida residence and, with a search warrant, took swabs from the inside of Danzinger's mouth. The swabs were sent to the state police DNA lab, and the profile was found to be a match to the profile from the May 2003 assault, investigators wrote in the affidavit.

All of the other assaults or attempted assaults from 2001-03 in Ohio and Erie County remain under investigation. Anyone with information that might assist police in the ongoing probe is asked to call state police Trooper Nicole Ludwig at (814) 774-9611.

Contact Tim Hahn at thahn@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNhahn.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Probe ongoing in decades-old child assaults in Erie County and Ohio