A suspect has been charged in a 2013 rape at the South Acton Commuter Rail Station, and police say it was a car accident and a bottle of Fireball that helped them solve the crime.
“We know the terrible personal violation and the continuing trauma that is experienced by survivors of sexual assault crimes,” Middlesex DA Marian Ryan said Tuesday. “We do not give up on these cases. We are committed to using every tool available to us — not just advances in technology — but creative diligent investigative work to bring these cases to resolution.”
In the evening of June 18, 2013, a 22-year-old woman, alone at the South Acton station, finished a cell phone call “when she noticed a young white man who was not known to her come toward the platform. She was assuming that he was also waiting for the train,” Ryan said.
That man then raped her at knifepoint, forced the woman to throw away her phone and then fled on foot, the DA said. He could not be found by the police who arrived on the scene and there were no cameras in the area.
On Tuesday, Ryan and Acton Police Chief James Cogan say that the rapist is Christopher Aldrich, 28, of Lunenberg. The man was arraigned in Concord District Court on a charge of aggravated rape, where Judge Joseph Hurley ordered Aldrich be held without bail and set a next court date of March 22.
The 22-year-old woman that night was rushed to a nearby hospital where a sexual assault nurse collected forensic evidence that was sent to the State Police Crime Laboratory, where technicians were able to develop a DNA profile of the attacker.
Two years ago, investigators put that DNA profile through a Forensic Genetic Genealogy analysis, which connects the profile to matching relatives to develop a pool of suspects. That’s when the DA said Aldrich was on their radar.
Last fall, investigators got their chance to match Aldrich to the sample when they say he crashed his car on Nov. 9, 2022.
Police on the scene of the crash allegedly seized an open bottle of Fireball — a popular whiskey flavored like cinnamon — and other items from Aldrich’s Ford Crown Victoria. Investigators swabbed those items and were able to make a DNA profile that they say matches that of the 2013 rape to a certainty of less than 1 in 3 sextillion individuals.
A sextillion is a 1 followed by 21 zeros, and a number nearly 126 billion times that of the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimated 7.94 billion global population at the start of this year.
Ryan said that this case “marks an important milestone” for her office’s Cold Case Unit, launched in 2019.
“We are changing the narrative of what defines ‘cold case’ and at the same time sending a strong message to victims and perpetrators of sexual violence in this county,” she said. “The mere passage of time does nothing to affect our resolve to pursue justice in these cases.”