Cigarette Butt Was Key to Cracking Cold Case - Man Suspected of Horrific Child Sex Crimes 2 Decades Ago is Now Behind Bars
A cigarette butt helped police bring an alleged child rapist into custody, 20 years after the crime.
KCUR-FM reported 58-year-old David James Zimbrick was arrested Monday in Raytown, Missouri, in connection with a child rape that occurred in Lawrence, Kansas, over two decades ago.
Police Chief Rich Lockhart said a cigarette butt from that day, along with “genetic genealogy” technology, helped police identify the suspect.
Zimbrick now faces crimes against two children in separate incidents that took place in 2000 and 2003. He is being held on $1 million bond.
David James Zimbrick was taken into custody more than two decades after police say he sexually assaulted two children at a park. #OxygenTrueCrimeNews
Visit the link for more: https://t.co/0JXcCe2iph pic.twitter.com/3PwfxZxUiO
— Oxygen True Crime (@oxygen) January 2, 2026
According to People, in the 2000 incident, three children were riding their bikes in a park when a man offered them $20 to help him look for something.
One of the children went with the man, and another told a parent, who went looking for his daughter.
The girl told her father she had been sexually assaulted by a man smoking a cigarette. Two detectives searched the park and recovered a smoldering cigarette butt.
In 2003, another incident occurred in the same park when a man stopped two 10-year-old boys and made the same offer. He allegedly sexually assaulted one of them when the boys split up and went in different directions.
People reported that DNA evidence was collected from the second incident. In 2016, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation was able to match that evidence to the DNA from the cigarette.
More recently, genetic technology helped tie those two cases to the suspect’s mother, leading investigators to Zimbrick.
Lockhart credited detectives Amy Price and Meghan Bardwell, along with the testing lab, for identifying the suspect.
He also recognized retired detective Mike McAtee, who collected the cigarette butt in 2000.
“Without that piece of evidence, we would not have been able to link these two cases,” he said.
“I hope this arrest provides some measure of comfort to the survivors,” he said, adding that additional cases are being looked at without direct evidence to Zimbrick. “While we do not have any evidence of additional victims, it is likely there are other cases out there and we hope this investigation will help locate those other cases.”
In today’s political realm, we often forget how much police do to serve their communities.
Because of the people involved here, a man is behind bars for allegedly committing horrible crimes against children.
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