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After 9,257 days, a cigarette butt and forensic genetic genealogy helped in the arrest of a 58-year-old man for sex crimes committed in the early 2000s.
I was there Tuesday as Lawrence Police Chief Rich Lockhart and Douglas County District Attorney Dakota Loomis announced the charges against David Zimbrick.
Zimbrick faces three counts involving two victims: one count of aggravated criminal sodomy and one count of rape in two cases.
Loomis said after a quarter of a century of work by LKPD, it is now his office’s job to hold Zimbrick accountable.
The incidents were reported in the area of Naismith Valley Park in Lawrence.
In both cases, Lockhart said Zimbrick approached the children — a 7-year-old girl in 2000 and a boy around the age of 10 in 2003 — while they were riding bikes and asked them to help him find something, saying he would pay them $20.
After the children were separated from their friends, Zimbrick allegedly took them into a wooded area and sexually assaulted them.
"These kids were doing something we all did as kids, riding their bikes in a park, something they should have been able to do without being violently sexually assaulted by a sexual predator,” Lockhart said. “It took us more than two decades to finally find him and put him in a place where he finally can’t hurt other children."
In the case of the 7-year-old girl, she told her parents the man was smoking a cigarette. When detectives returned to search the scene, they found several cigarette butts, including one that was still smoking.
The problem was that the DNA from the cigarette didn’t match anyone in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
Years later, the arrest of California’s “Golden State Killer,” which involved genetic genealogy, gave Det. Amy Price an idea.
She submitted a request for funding to send evidence to Parabon Nanolabs, which specializes in forensic genetic genealogy cases where DNA evidence exists but there is no offender to connect it to. The process is similar to 23 and Me.
In 2020, a sample was sent in, and information came back with possible relatives.
While the COVID-19 pandemic paused some of the progress, new hope was sparked in 2022 when the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) was informed by the FBI it was using forensic genetic genealogy and assisting local agencies.
From there, detectives were able to identify the suspect may have been put up for adoption.
In October 2025, Lawrence detectives visited Santa Fe, New Mexico, to speak with the birth mother, who confirmed she was contacted in 2005 by her son, David Zimbrick. She shared a photo of him that matched the initial suspect description.
Through further investigation, including a warrant for adoption records, detectives were able to make contact with Zimbrick in Raytown, Missouri. He told detectives he was from Lawrence, and a search warrant was completed for a DNA sample.
Detectives said a match came back Dec. 18 that connected his DNA to the sex crimes.
I spoke exclusively with the lead detective, Det. Price, who has been on the case since 2000.
"It does feel like a huge accomplishment … but it’s really for the victims and their families," Price said. "It’s not about my success. It’s about their well-being, it really is."
Zimbrick was arrested without incident by U.S. Marshals on Monday.
While there are three other local cases with similar suspect descriptions and stories, Lockhart said there is no physical evidence to tie Zimbrick to those instances.
Zimbrick is being held in the Jackson County Detention Center while he awaits extradition back to Douglas County.
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