Ex-con gets 14 years for 1995 sexual assault
JEFFERSON COUNTY – A man who was leaving custody when he was identified as a suspect in a 1995 sexual
Jimmy Ruybal
assault now faces another 14 years behind bars after Lakewood Police investigating the cold case linked him to the assault.
Jimmy Gerald Ruybal, 56, is awaiting transfer to the Department of Corrections after Jefferson County District Court Judge Stephen Munsinger sentenced him to the maximum 14 years in prison for the sexual assault of a teen-ager he met at a local gas station nearly 15 years ago. Ruybal’s guilty plea on a charge of sexual assault with force is his fifth felony conviction.
Ruybal pleaded guilty to the class-three felony charge in September.
Ruybal was leaving Department of Corrections custody in October 2008 when a DNA sample he surrendered in the exit process was matched to a DNA sample submitted by LPD officers after the September, 1995 sexual assault of a teen-age girl in Lakewood. The match was obtained through the national Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
Until the match turned up, police had too little evidence to identify a suspect, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Police reports indicate the teen went to a Conoco gas station at 6000 1st Avenue after a fight with her mother. She had called a friend on a payphone at the station in hopes of getting a ride to the friend’s house.
Ruybal, who was using another payphone, offered to give her a ride, but instead got her in the car and sexually assaulted her at knifepoint. After the assault, the girl jumped from Ruybal’s moving car and ran for help.
“This is a tragedy that this young girl was assaulted. The good news is that we were able to bring justice to the situation,” said District Attorney Scott Storey. “Law enforcement and prosecutors are committed to solving cold cases like this one.
“Advancements in technology, including analysis of fingerprints and DNA evidence provide us with tools we didn’t have a decade ago,” Storey added. “With today’s technology we have a better opportunity to develop the evidence we need to arrest and prosecute in investigations which had previously reached a dead end.”
