A jury in the Court in Nykøbing Falster must decide whether a local man raped and attempted to kill a girl.

More than 25 years after a brutal assault on a girl in Bøtø on Falster, charges have been brought against a 57-year-old man.

The prosecution announced this on Friday.

The indictment concerns a crime that took place on Bøtø Strand on August 4, 1999.

A then 11-year-old girl was raped, and the prosecution believes that the defendant also tried to kill the girl.

It is DNA traces and new possibilities for so-called family tracing that are the reason why the case is coming to court after so many years.

It was in December last year that the South Zealand and Lolland-Falster Police were able to announce the breakthrough in the investigation using the special method.

A man from the local area was arrested and has since been remanded in custody because the court found the suspicion to be justified. The 57-year-old has pleaded not guilty.

A jury trial will be held in the Court in Nykøbing Falster, which will hear the case.

In a press release, special prosecutor Susanne Bluhm emphasizes that it is up to the court to make a decision.

“When we press charges, it is because we assess that overall we have sufficient evidence that the defendant is the perpetrator of the serious crimes against the 11-year-old girl,” she says.

Family research has also been key in a few other investigations into older serious cases.

The fact that investigators were led to the local man’s trail is because his child was in the police’s DNA register, folketidende.dk has previously reported.

In the court hearing after the arrest, the gray-bearded man walked with a cane. But on that August day in 1999, he allegedly threatened the child with a gun-like object and dragged her towards a forest.

In addition, the man – according to the authorities – must have squeezed the girl’s neck so hard that she lost consciousness.

Back in 1999, there was a lot of media coverage of the unusual case, where the police, among other things, produced a so-called phantom drawing.

The then head of the investigation, Bent Jørgensen, sat in the audience in the courtroom when the arrested person was brought before a judge.

“I was surprised that it was so similar,” he told Ritzau this winter about the old drawing.

And precisely the great similarity was one of the reasons why the judge decided to remand the man with the stick.

But there were also other arguments: Old photographs and, not least, DNA traces in material found on the victim.

ritzau