First charges from Wisconsin rape kits testing involve Fox Valley case

MADISON - The first prosecution resulting from Wisconsin's four-year effort to test thousands of shelved rape kits involves a Fox Valley case, Attorney General Brad Schimel announced Tuesday.

Aaron Heiden, 29, faces two felony counts of sexual assault stemming from a Menasha woman's allegations that a man named "Alex" assaulted her in 2008.

Heiden could face decades in prison if convicted. State authorities said he was arrested Tuesday in Eau Claire and will be transferred to the Winnebago County jail.

DNA from an untested rape kit led investigators to Heiden, according to the criminal complaint in the case. The kit was collected in 2008 but never sent to state crime labs until a grant-funded project gained steam in 2017.

The project started in 2014 when a state Department of Justice survey discovered more than 6,000 untested rape kits that were scattered in police and hospital storage rooms across the state.

RELATED: Wisconsin rape kits testing yields new suspects in 11 cases

RELATED: Help us investigate Wisconsin’s treatment of rape kits

Among the police agencies that reported untested kits in 2014 was the Fox Crossing Police Department. It reported 18, including the kit that pointed to Heiden, according to the department's chief, Tim Seaver.

Seaver said the kit was not tested by state crime lab analysts because "they weren't requesting it." The crime lab had requested and tested other evidence from the case but it didn't identify Heiden.

"I don’t think it was necessary to send everything. It stayed here in a freezer," Seaver said.

Had the kit been collected today, it could have fallen under a 2011 state law that requires law enforcement to test sexual assault evidence from cases involving unidentified suspects. The law didn’t require law enforcement to retroactively test evidence, however.

The State Crime Lab is part of the Department of Justice that Schimel has overseen since 2015. A Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment on why the kit wasn't tested in 2008, citing the ongoing case.

In 2015, state Department of Justice authorities applied for and were awarded $4 million in grants to help pay for testing many kits. The state later received an additional $3.1 million in federal grants to aid the effort.

According to the criminal complaint:

On Aug. 3, 2008, a woman reported to the Town of Menasha Police Department (now known as Fox Crossing Police Department) that she met a man at a bar the previous night who called himself "Alex." The woman said they later were having sex at her home and the man became forceful. She told him "you have to stop" and "you're hurting me," but he didn't stop.

The woman visited a hospital on Aug. 3, 2008 for a forensic exam where evidence for a rape kit was collected.

Investigators collected evidence from the woman's home and had it tested for DNA in 2009, but no matches with offender databases were found. However, in February of last year, evidence from the woman's rape kit was tested and pointed to Heiden.

Heiden told Fox Crossing and Eau Claire investigators that he grew up in the Appleton area and graduated from Appleton East High School in 2007. He said he left for college after graduation and returned to the area in the summers. When questioned about the allegations, Heiden declined to speak without a lawyer.

Heiden couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday. A lawyer for him is not listed in online court records.

RELATED: Over 2,400 untested rape kits in Wisconsin involve possible child victims

RELATED: Scant action in Capitol on rape kits