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The "cold case" remained unsolved until last year, according to acting Camden County Prosecutor Jill S. Mayer and Somerdale Police Chief James J. Walsh.
For details on last year's arrest of a fugitive suspect in South Carolina, previously reported by Daily Voice, click here.
Sanika Adams, 46, and formerly of Lawnside, was indicted for his involvement in the April 15, 1999, home invasion robbery, Mayer and Walsh said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
This indictment charges Adams, who at the time was a 25-year-old Camden County resident, with first-degree attempted murder, multiple counts of first-degree kidnapping, several counts of aggravated sexual assault, criminal restraint, making terroristic threats and several weapons charges, their statement said.
Adams is accused of breaking into the home shared by a woman, 58, and her 28-year-old daughter in Somerdale in 1999 after allegedly cutting the phone lines so the mother could not call for help, according to their statement.
Police officers from Somerdale, Hi-Nella, Magnolia, and Laurel Springs responded to a home on April 15, 1999, after the older woman said she awoke to a man holding a knife to her throat.
DNA was collected from the victim of the rape, but no suspect was identified at the time. In 2020, the New Jersey State Police lab confirmed that Adams was the source of the DNA taken from the rape victim 21 years ago, Mayer and Walsh said.
On Dec. 4, 2020, the CCPO and Somerdale PD arrested Adams in Summerville, South Carolina, where he was residing.
“Cold cases often seem hopeless,” Mayer said on Tuesday. “We want the community to know -we will simply never give up.”
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