DNA may link a Philadelphia man accused of dismembering people en route to a cold-case murder, police say
PHILADELPHIA — Authorities say a man accused of slashing people with a large knife while biking on a Philadelphia walking trail in recent weeks is now a person of interest in the cold case murder of a medical student that occurred in a series high-profile sexual practices. attacks in a large city park twenty years ago.
Elias Diaz, 46, is charged with aggravated assault and other charges in the attacks or attempted attacks in late November and early December, in which police say he used a machete blade against people on the Pennypack Park Trail in Northeast Philadelphia .
Interim Police Chief John Stanford Jr. said Diaz's DNA appeared to link him to the 2003 strangulation murder of a medical student in the city's sprawling Fairmount Park and perhaps to several other sexual assaults there. Stanford said Diaz is now a person of interest and charges were pending final confirmation of the DNA link.
Rebecca Park, 30, a fourth-year student at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine from Olney, Maryland, disappeared after going for a run in the park in July 2003. Her body was found buried under wood and leaves on a steep hill in the park. about 200 feet from the road, authorities said.
Police said the crime was linked to the April 2003 rape of a 21-year-old jogger in the park, and in October that year a 37-year-old woman managed to fend off a man who tried to rape her. In 2007, a 29-year-old woman walking on a path in Pennypack Park was sexually assaulted and robbed, police said.
In 2021, DNA analysis helped create a series of composite sketches of the man believed responsible for the attacks, and genealogical databases provided a link to a man named Elias Diaz, but he could not be found. Officials said the newly arrested suspect had previous contact with police, but authorities did not have his DNA until his arrest in the recent attacks.
The Defender Association of Philadelphia, which is listed in court documents as representing Diaz in the recent cases, declined comment on these allegations or any new ones before the news conference.
Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore, chief of homicide in the Philadelphia district attorney's office, said she expected final DNA results by the end of the day and “fully” expected to charge Elias Diaz with murder and related crimes. crimes in connection with Park's death.
Stanford said the Fairmount Park beatings and Park's murder had “haunted” the community and the department, pointing to the presence of retired Capt. John Darby, who had just taken command of the special victims unit when the attacks began.
“This was important enough for him today to come back,” he said. “These are the kinds of things that haunt you until you can put an end to them.”
Darby echoed his words, saying, “Researchers will tell you that when they go home, the last thing they think about before they go to bed at night, the first thing they think about when they wake up in the morning, this kind of have fallen.”