The 26-year hunt for the person responsible for the assaults and slaying of several women on local bike paths - including attacks on UB community members Linda Yalem and Joan Diver - led to the arrest of the man who police say is the "Bike Path Rapist" on Monday.
According to The Buffalo News, 48-year-old Cheektowaga native Altemio Sanchez was taken into custody Monday after DNA taken from silverware in an Amherst restaurant was linked to three murders and at least seven sexual assaults in Erie County over the past 20 years, including the rape and murder of UB student Linda Yalem in 1990 and Joan Diver, wife of a UB professor and mother of four, this past October.
Vice President of Student Affairs Dennis Black said that Sanchez even went as far as to participate in the Linda Yalem Run, which commemorates the death of the former student, 10 years ago.
"(Monday) night there was a media report that he ran in the race," Black said. "We did a record check over the past 16 years that indicates he ran in the 1996 Linda Yalem Run."
Mary Murray, public information officer at the Erie County Sheriff's Department, said the Sheriff's Office worked in conjunction with Buffalo Police, Amherst Police and New York State Police to form the task force that led to Sanchez's capture.
According to Murray, the breakthrough came when police decided to reexamine the case of a woman who had been raped in 1981.
"We reviewed evidence from the cold case file, hit the pavement, and went back to the home where Buffalo Police had been 25 years earlier," Murray said.
UB Chief of Police Gerald Schoenle said that while "one of our investigators (Inspector Dan Jay) was working as a liaison between the task force and UB... we can't take any credit for (the arrest)."
Schoenle also said that while University Police are "certainly happy" that the man responsible for the assaults has been brought into custody, they urge students to take precautions when traveling local bike paths.
Black said that even though students should still practice personal safety, he is relieved that the case has come to a close.
"There's kind of a dark cloud that hung over us over the past decade, and it got darker over last semester," Black said. "Now that it's been lifted, there's a little happiness in seeing (closure) for the harm done to families, community members."
While UB chemistry professor Steven Diver, husband to Joan Diver, issued a statement thanking UB community members for their support, he declined further comment.
Sanchez's attorney entered a plea of not guilty to one charge of murder in second degree in court on Tuesday and Sanchez has been taken into custody of the Sheriff's Office.
