Man arrested in connection with murder, rape committed 26 years ago

In a dramatic breakthrough, a 64-year-old man was arrested in connection with a rape and murder that took place 26 years ago, Hebrew-language media reported Wednesday.

A gag order has been imposed on all details pertaining to the case.

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court extended the suspect’s remand by a week — a shorter period than the police had requested.

The judge noted that “a combination of police efforts and technological development has allowed a breakthrough in the case, and today the reasonable suspicion against the detainee is of a very high standard,” the Walla news site reported.

The suspect’s lawyer told the Haaretz daily that his client’s rights had been violated after his arrest, and that he denies any connection to the 1993 crime.

“The suspect claims that he is not connected to the incident and he has been interrogated several times since his arrest yesterday. He has [only] one version — he does not know what the case is about,” said lawyer Michael Ironi.

“I think that the fact that he was interrogated without being given the right to consult with an attorney before the questioning is a blatant violation [of his rights],” Ironi added.

The arrest comes just weeks after the Jerusalem District Court convicted a man over the 1998 sexual assault and murder of 16-year-old Noa Eyal, as a result of a forensics breakthrough years after the attack.

Daniel Nachmani, 42, a married father of two from Jerusalem who works as a car electrician, was identified as the suspect using an advanced DNA method that matched evidence from the crime scene to a saliva sample gathered from a street he spat on four years ago.

דניאל נחמני הורשע ברצח נועה אייל ב-1998 https://t.co/c06z1dthzq pic.twitter.com/qgiz39lmuD

— MSN_IL (@MSN_IL) January 3, 2019

The court acquitted Nachmani of an additional charge of rape due to lack of evidence.

Defense lawyers for Nahmani said they would study the conviction and said their client continues to maintain his innocence.

Eyal, 17, disappeared late at night on February 22, 1998, as she made her way homeward after seeing a movie with a friend. She was last seen waiting at a bus stop in Davidka Square in downtown Jerusalem. Her body was found the following evening in a forest near the capital’s northwestern neighborhood of Ramot, where she lived.

For 16 years the murder remained unsolved even though investigators had managed to obtain DNA samples of the suspect from the crime scene. Samples were taken from a long list of possible sex offenders across the country, but there were no matches linking any of them to Eyal.

A breakthrough came when police obtained permission to use an advanced DNA analysis method which enables linking between family members within the pool of samples held by cops.

The technology narrowed down the search to Nachmani as a prime suspect. Police began following him and secured a DNA sample after he spat in the street. The sample matched evidence taken at the murder scene and he was arrested in 2014.

Stuart Winer contributed to this report.