A new forensics method has helped to identify a man from his identical twin for the first time in a U.S. court, and secured the man’s conviction for violent abduction and rape in Prince William County, Virginia.

The Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office said in a release Friday that Russell Marubbio, 54, of Putnam County, Florida, was convicted on Aug. 21 for a December 1987 rape and abduction in Woodbridge, Virginia. 

The victim, a gas station worker, went outside to use a restroom and was subsequently restrained and raped by a man with a knife, Prince William prosecutors said. At the time, the case went cold; the victim did not know her assailant and there were no matches for a DNA profile created at the time. 

The case was reopened in 2019, but new DNA testing turned up two results — Marubbio and his identical twin. Detectives sought the assistance of the forensics laboratory Parabon NanoLabs. 

The lab used whole genome sequencing to find mutations that developed early in their stages of development and thereby differentiated and identified Marubbio as the culprit instead of his twin brother. 

The case is the first time the laboratory technique has been used successfully to tell twins apart in a U.S. court, Prince William prosecutors said.

“On average, twins will have eight of those types of differences across the whole 3 billion bases” of the genome, Parabon Director of Bioinformatics Ellen Greytak told The Guardian.

A judge will sentence Marubbio on Nov. 7. 

“This conviction demonstrates the commitment of both our office and the Prince William County Police Department to ensuring that, no matter how much time has passed, we will fight together to seek justice for victims,” said Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Amy Ashworth.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.