Charges filed in 18-year-old Dyer rape case
By Ruth Ann Krause Post-Tribune correspondent October 30, 2012 4:38PM
Updated: December 1, 2012 4:47PM
A Hammond man facing charges in a 2002 sexual assault in Munster has been charged in Lake Superior Court in a similar crime from 1994 in Dyer.
The new case against Jaime Miguel Cordero, 49, charges him with burglary resulting in bodily injury and alleges that he broke into the victim’s home with the intent to commit rape and which resulted in bodily injury to the woman.
Details of the two cases are eerily similar. Both women had been outside doing yard work and re-entered their homes to discover a man later identified as Cordero waiting for them inside.
In the case filed last week, the victim told police she went inside after working in the yard and discovered a man in her kitchen wearing a black ski mask on Aug. 31, 1994. The man forced her to the floor, struck her on the head several times and wrapped duct tape around her head, covering her eyes. He used rope to tie her arms behind her back, then removed her clothing and had sex with her.
Police recovered a wash cloth that was examined by the FBI. DNA analysis identified Cordero as the source of the DNA. The probability of an unrelated individual at random from the black, Caucasian, southeastern Hispanic or southwestern Hispanic population matching that DNA profile is one in 6 trillion.
In March, Cordero had been charged with rape in a June 2002 sexual assault in Munster based on DNA evidence. The woman had her eyes, hands and mouth taped before he sexually assaulted her. Two weeks before that case was scheduled to go to trial, prosecutors dismissed that charge and filed a new case charging Cordero with criminal deviate conduct and burglary involving the same victim.
