A 53-year-old man has been charged in an abduction that police say is linked to a series of kidnappings and rapes that occurred in a metropolitan area around 35 years ago.
David V. Coffey was arraigned Wednesday afternoon in Danbury State Superior Court after being arrested on charges of first-degree kidnapping and conspiracy to conduct first-degree kidnapping on Tuesday for suspected involvement in crimes committed over three decades ago. During the Wednesday arraignment, his attorney entered not-guilty pleas on his behalf.
His arrest is the first in a string of cold cases that have perplexed detectives for decades, according to the Danbury Detectives Department, which issued a news release hours before his arraignment.
Detectives were investigating a spate of incidents on Lake Avenue and Merrimac Street in the late 1980s, which scared the neighborhood. Erin Henry, a Danbury police spokesperson, said that they included the abduction and rape of female residents.
“Despite the diligent efforts of the investigators at the time, the cases went cold (unsolved),” she told me.
Fast forward to November 2023, when a lady reported being abducted and sexually molested in the late 1980s to police.
The Danbury Police Department’s Special Victims Unit revisited the case and conducted additional investigations, including “re-interviewing of persons identified by the original investigators and using resources that were not available in the late 1980s,” Henry stated.
Coffey was not charged with sexual assault as of Wednesday, she added.
Connecticut’s statute of limitations for felony sex assault is normally 20 years, however, there are several exceptions based on the victim’s age and other criteria. Detectives are still investigating the sequence of offenses, according to authorities.
Coffey’s case was originally filed in juvenile court because the offenses he is accused of occurred in April 1989, but it was transferred to adult court Wednesday afternoon after a brief closed-door juvenile arraignment session.
During the post-transfer public hearing at the state Superior Court in Danbury, Judge Charles Stango acknowledged Coffey’s “current status as someone on parole out of the state of Georgia with felony probation” and chose to keep his Connecticut bond set at $750,000.
State’s Attorney David Applegate, who called the facts of the case “particularly heinous,” said the bond amount — which Stango previously established based on the claims in Coffey’s arrest warrant — was “appropriate.”
Stango said Coffey would have to post the $750,000 bond in the Danbury courthouse, and if he did, he would be placed in electronically monitored home confinement.
Rob Berke, Coffey’s attorney, stated that his client has ties to Connecticut through family and employment and that he would be fine with the court setting “non-financial conditions that can assure his whereabouts.”
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