Duran enters pleas in six decades-old rape cases
May 10—A man charged with the rapes of six women in the 1990s pleaded no contest Friday to 15 counts of felony criminal sexual penetration, halting a trial that began this week, the 2nd Judicial District Attorney's Office said.
Edward Gilbert Duran, 65, faces between 18 and 270 years in prison at sentencing, said his attorney, Roberta Yurcic.
She and her co-counsel, Jay Nair, "will present additional information in support of Mr. Duran at his sentencing," Yurcic said Friday in an email.
Judge Bruce Fox has not scheduled Duran's sentencing hearing.
A no-contest plea, while not technically a guilty plea, often has the same effect as a guilty plea and is often part of a plea bargain.
Duran was charged in the rapes of six Albuquerque women from 1992 to 1997 based on DNA evidence that remained untested for decades.
In the trial that began Tuesday, Duran faced four counts of first-degree criminal sexual penetration in the rapes of two women in 1992 and 1994.
"One of his victims was in court to testify (Friday) when Duran stopped the trial" and entered the plea, a spokeswoman for the 2nd Judicial District Attorney's Office said Friday in a written statement.
"In all of the crimes, Duran broke into his victim's apartments, threatened them with a knife and raped them," spokeswoman Nancy Laflin said in the statement. "He did not know any of his victims."
The trial focused on DNA evidence tested in recent years as part of an effort to clear a backlog of thousands of untested rape kits that had remained in police evidence storage for years.
Prosecutor Lisa Trabaudo told jurors in opening statements Tuesday that Duran broke into the homes of two women and raped them.
The medical evidence collected from the two women became part of a backlog of some 4,500 untested rape kits tested by two scientific laboratories from 2019 to 2021, Trabaudo said.
Former 2nd Judicial District Attorney Raúl Torrez, now New Mexico's attorney general, announced Duran's arrest in December 2021 in connection with a 1997 rape.
Torrez said his office had hired a contractor, BODE Technology, to use forensic genealogy to test rape kits, matching Duran's DNA using open-source data from people seeking information about their family trees.
Trabaudo told jurors that in both cases, the attacker wore a mask, carried a knife and forced both women to bathe or shower after the attack. Both the attacks occurred in first-floor apartments in the vicinity of Tramway and Indian School NE, she said.
Yurcic told jurors that evidence collected decades ago was mishandled and can prove unreliable.
Yurcic drew a contrast between the "persuasive" testimony jurors would hear from the two alleged rape victims and the "unreliable" and "untrustworthy" evidence that prosecutors planned to offer of Duran's guilt.
In 2016, Tim Keller — then state auditor, now Albuquerque's mayor — announced that an audit found New Mexico had 5,302 untested rape kits, which was the highest rate in the nation.
