DNA match in CODIS cracks 25-year-old North Carolina rape case
A Michigan DNA hit revived a Selma rape-kidnapping case from 2001, sending investigators from a preserved rape kit to an extradited suspect.
North Carolina authorities brought 71-year-old Jaman Mohamed Al-Jasi back from Michigan on Sunday, July 12, 2026, after a CODIS DNA match tied him to a rape and kidnapping case that had sat unanswered for a quarter century in Selma.
Selma police said the case began on Aug. 24, 2001, at Brotherhood Market in the 300 block of South Pollock Street, where investigators were called to a reported rape and kidnapping involving a 24-year-old victim. The file went cold for years, then resurfaced in January 2026 when detectives were notified of a DNA match from Dearborn, Michigan.
Investigators said the profile came from an unrelated Michigan investigation and matched DNA recovered from the Selma rape kit. The FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS, is the national database used by federal, state and local forensic labs to exchange and compare DNA profiles, and in this case it linked evidence preserved in North Carolina to a suspect living in Detroit.
Selma Police Chief Justin R. Vause said investigators had to rebuild the case from aging reports and records many believed were gone. “For nearly twenty-five years, this case remained unanswered, and for nearly twenty-five years, a victim and her loved ones lived without the closure they deserved,” Vause said.
Authorities said Al-Jasi was arrested in March 2026, but the return to North Carolina was delayed by legal proceedings in Michigan. He has now been charged with first-degree forcible rape, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree sexual offense, and he is being held without bond in the Johnston County Detention Center.
The case fits the pattern cold-case investigators and prosecutors have been pressing for years: preserved sexual-assault evidence, entered into modern databases, can produce a hit long after the original crime. North Carolina’s Department of Justice received a $2 million Sexual Assault Kit Initiative grant in fiscal year 2018 to inventory sexual assault kits, address older unsubmitted evidence and improve trauma-informed investigations and prosecutions.
For true-crime readers, the chain is unusually clear: a violent crime at Brotherhood Market, years of silence, a CODIS hit from Dearborn, a March arrest, and an extradition back to North Carolina. The evidence that sat in a kit for 25 years was the thread that pulled the case open again.
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