BELLE FOURCHE, S.D. (AP) — A man has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman in a 2012 Butte County case that was solved using forensic genealogy.
Thirty-four-year-old Shane Boice pleaded guilty to second-degree rape as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.
Two burglary counts were dropped as part of the agreement.
Police tested DNA obtained from the crime scene at the time but found no match within DNA databases.
The police department and South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation continued to investigate the case and in 2018 decided to send a DNA sample to a genetic genealogy company and that eventually led them to Boice.