An Arizona man linked by DNA to a series of rapes in San Diego and Riverside counties as far back as 1995 was sentenced Thursday to 50 years to life in prison.

Christopher VanBuskirk, 47, agreed to accept the lengthy term when he pleaded guilty in December to six felony counts of forcible rape — five of them during burglaries. The sixth victim was jogging when she was assaulted.

Two of his victims and the mother of a third victim told San Diego Superior Court Judge Francis Devaney how the assaults made them fearful in their own homes. VanBuskirk apologized to the victims and to his family for his actions.

Because VanBuskirk was 23 at the time of his first attacks, he is eligible for youthful offender parole after serving 25 years in state prison, Deputy District Attorney Martin Doyle said. He said, too, that because the defendant will be over age 60 after serving 25 years, he would be eligible for elder parole and youthful offender parole at the same time.


Between August and November of 1995, VanBuskirk raped a jogger in Clairemont, then he broke into a home in Pacific Beach and two in Tierrasanta. In those cases he waited, masked and armed with a knife, for the women to return. The victims ranged in age from 18 to 40 at the time.

The two Riverside County cases took place in Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage in 2002 and 2004. The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office handed off prosecution of its cases to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office.

Evidence collected during each of the six cases revealed that a single assailant was responsible, but investigators were unable to locate a match in DNA databases used by law enforcement, according to authorities.

In February, San Diego police investigators sought help from the FBI’s Forensic Genetic Genealogy Team to solve the case. Genetic genealogy matched DNA collected at the crime scenes to a potential culprit’s blood relatives. Investigators charted a family tree to narrow down any relative who would have been physically able to commit the crime and who lived in the right region.


That information led them to VanBusKirk.

The genetic genealogy method of identifying suspects gained national attention in 2018 after it was used to identify a suspect in the Golden State Killer case.

VanBuskirk was living in Goodyear, Ariz. and managing a Habit Burger restaurant when he was arrested on April 29. He was booked into a San Diego County jail in May.

He faced a sentence of 190 years to life in prison had he been convicted of all the individual sex acts involving the six victims alleged in the original complaints. Some sex-crime charges were dismissed in light of the plea.