DNA led to an arrest, a guilty plea and a 48-year prison sentence in a 2005 murder that had gone unsolved, according to the Denver district attorney’s office.
Gerald Cooper, 48, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder today and was sentenced in the death of 57-year-old Carol Colaiano, who was found beaten and stabbed to death in her apartment at 1255 Galapago St. in July 2005.
Investigators believed she had been sexually assaulted in addition to being brutally beaten and stabbed repeatedly with a pair of scissors.
Seven months later, another resident in the same apartment building was sexually assaulted before she escaped and named Cooper, who lived in the building, as her attacker, the DA’s office said.
Cooper later pleaded guilty to assault in that attack and was required to submit DNA, which linked him to the Colaiano murder, according to prosecutors.
