Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Ryan exonerated Luis Vargas after DNA evidence linked the crimes to the so-called “teardrop rapist,” who is suspected of more than 30 rapes in the Los Angeles area since 1996 and has never been identified, AP reported. Sadly, it would take almost fifteen years, dozens of sexual assaults, and many advances in DNA science for anyone to see Luis was speaking the truth on December 7, 1999. Vargas, who has maintained his innocence, reached out to lawyers and students at the California Innocence Project at California Western School of Law. He told them he believed the teardrop rapist committed the assaults of which he was convicted, according to AP. The Tear Drop Rapist was given his moniker due to the fact that he was often described by his victims as having one or two teardrop tattoos under his eye. And prosecutors also noted a discrepancy in the victims' descriptions: Two victims said their attacker had two teardrops tattooed near his left eye. The Tear Drop Rapist is attributed to having committed 35 attacks; not including the three attacks for which Vargas was convicted. In the recent letter to the court, the district attorney's office said the sophisticated technology used to exclude Vargas' DNA did not exist back in the late-1990s. In December 2012, aided by the California Innocence Project, he filed a request to examine DNA collected from the jean shorts and underwear of one of the victims he was convicted of attacking, according to court documents.
– A California man imprisoned for 16 years for sexual assault was exonerated Monday after DNA tests showed another man committed the crimes, USA Today reports. Luis Vargas, 46, broke down when an LA Superior Court judge granted a petition to release him from his sentence of 55 years to life for three sex crimes. The move came after DNA evidence linked those assaults to a serial attacker known as the Teardrop Rapist, so labeled for having a teardrop tattoo under his eye, the AP notes. That man, who was never caught, is suspected of having committed about three dozen crimes in the LA area. Vargas had matched assailant descriptions, and he caught investigators' eye because he had a faded teardrop tattoo under his left eye and a 1992 rape conviction involving his girlfriend at the time, reports the Los Angeles Times. "You can sentence me to all the years you want, but ... that individual that really did these crimes might really be raping someone out there," Vargas warned a judge before he was sentenced in 1999. In 2012, Vargas reached out to the California Innocence Project and asked to use DNA techniques to examine samples on the clothing of one of his alleged victims, per the Times. The DNA matched that of the victim and the Teardrop Rapist. The three victims had positively IDed Vargas as the perpetrator, but an Innocence Project attorney tells the AP it was a "shaky witness" case, an assertion the LA district attorney's office backed up in a recent court letter that said there were discrepancies and uncertainties in their identification of the rapist, the Times notes. Vargas still has to clear up some immigration issues before he's fully released, but he hopes to be home by Christmas.