A former Longmont man sentenced in 2007 to 72 years for a rape he committed in 1996 is being arrested for the 1993 murder of Tammera Marie Tatum in her Longmont home.
Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett said this afternoon that an arrest warrant – which has been sealed – has been issued for 47-year-old Rudy Gaytan, now serving a sentence of first-degree sexual assault at the Limon Correctional Facility.
Gaytan has been a suspect for several years in Tatum’s murder.
Garnett said that the Longmont Police Department began the investigation of Tatum’s murder on May 1, 1993, after her body was discovered in her apartment at 625 9th Avenue in Longmont.
He credited Detective Bruce Vaughan of the Longmont department – who was the lead investigator on the case in 1993 – of continuing to work “diligently” over the years to apprehend Tatum’s murderer.
Commander Tim Lewis, who heads the Longmont Police Department’s detective bureau, said that after Vaughan left the detective bureau, he worked as a canine officer but stayed in touch with detectives who were working the case.
He said when Vaughan was transferred back to the detective bureau he was reassigned the Tatum case.
Lewis said that advances in technology – specifically DNA technology – linked Gaytan to the Oct. 16, 1996 rape of a woman who lived near Gaytan. The victim in the rape case was 19 at the time.
The rape case was solved in 2006, when a DNA sample was taken from Gaytan when he was booked into prison on a drug conviction and the DNA matched DNA at the scene of the 1996 sexual assault.
He said it was also DNA – and enhanced DNA techniques – that link Gaytan to the Tatum murder.
Lewis said Gaytan’s DNA was found at the scene of Tatum’s murder.
Tatum, 30, was killed while her one-year-old daughter was in the home.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
