LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- For 20 years, a local family has been looking to answers.
A man was arrested and accused of raping a 13-year-old and shooting her stepdad in 2003. Defense attorneys said Thursday that investigators came to a conclusion by process of elimination, not fact.
Denim jeans from the suspect accused of raping the young girl and shooting her stepdad were left at the crime scene, containing his DNA.
Court documents showed that Charlestown police got a tip in December of 2022 that one of the three Hollowell brothers committed the crime in April of 2003.
David Hollowell, 52, was arrested last week.
One of his brothers was previously arrested for a felony, which meant his DNA would've been collected and was already in the system.
He was proven not to be a suspect in the case and police followed another Hollowell brother, pulled him over for expired tags and collected his DNA from his license.
They also went to his job and swabbed the door handle of his truck and said there were no fences or barriers preventing them from walking up to his car and swabbing the handle.
The defense argued there should've been a warrant for that. The DNA they got was sent to a lab, which then ruled him out as a suspect also. But there was a 98% chance the suspect was his sibling.
The defense argued in court that by a process of elimination, investigators determined David was the person who committed the crime.
They said without his actual DNA, there's enough of a chance that he's not the person responsible and prosecutors are just assuming they're biologically brothers.
"If you knew them casually, that would be a fine assumption to make, but you're talking about charging somebody with attempted murder and rape and child molestation based upon that assumption and some other important and other unfounded assumptions and it's just not good enough," Chief Public Defender Mickey Weber said.
"When getting that information, he relied upon that and prepared a search warrant to obtain DNA from the defendant," Krista Willike, deputy prosecuting attorney, said. "That was lawful. That was appropriate. That was not a reckless disregard for the facts presented."
The defense wants that search warrant and evidence thrown out. Charlestown police are expected to hold a news conference about the case at some point on Friday.
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