Two Cook County detectives are starting to see successes in their mission to bring justice to dozens of rape victims whose rape kits were never sent to a state police crime lab for DNA testing.
Cook County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Jim Davis and Detective Judith Powe were assigned last year to focus on the backlog of rape cases in the cash-strapped southern Chicago suburb of Robbins.
A sheriff's police inspection in 2013 of Robbins' department evidence room found 176 rape kits dating back to 1986 the department had neglected to fully investigate. Some of those were never sent for state crime lab testing.
The pair's investigations have so far netted five arrests. Davis says the ongoing investigations are "what we owed people."
