A Manley Hot Springs man accused in a high-profile rape and kidnapping case last year — which fell apart after the victim's death in July — has been extradited to Nevada in connection with a cold-case sexual assault from 12 years ago.
Fairbanks District Attorney Gregg Olson said in an email that Nevada authorities arrived in Alaska on Tuesday to take custody of 37-year-old Pirate, who legally changed his name from Daniel Lloyd Selovich in 2013.
DNA evidence from the Alaska case against Pirate, who took a four-year plea deal in a Redding, California, sexual assault in December 2004 according to the Redding Record Searchlight, was linked to evidence in an unsolved Las Vegas case. Nevada authorities had faced a 90-day deadline to either extradite Pirate from Alaska or see him released.
Alaska State Troopers arrested Pirate last November in the Alaska case, during which he allegedly took a woman to a cabin near Manley Hot Springs in October 2015, then bound and raped her for more than a month. Charges against him were dropped, however, when the victim – whom Olson called a "necessary witness" – abruptly died at a roommate's home, in a case troopers said didn't appear to be a homicide or suicide.
[Accuser dies, charges dropped in case of kidnapping and rape at remote Alaska cabin]
Staff with the Clark County District Attorney's Office said Thursday that Pirate was in Nevada custody and been charged under his previous name. Court records on the Feb. 5, 2004, sexual assault show him charged with sexual assault, battery to commit sexual assault and first-degree kidnapping.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Detective Lora Cody said in an April document requesting an arrest warrant for Pirate that the victim in the Nevada case, a woman in a wheelchair, called police from the Ambassador Motel on Feb. 5, 2004, to report that she had been beaten with a belt and raped.
Police briefly detained Pirate at the time, Cody said, taking photos of him wearing the belt the victim said had been used to beat her. His belt was seized as evidence, along with other items from the victim's room.
The DNA links that led to Pirate's extradition this week only began to emerge in October 2015, when a sample entered into the national Combined DNA Index System from the Redding sexual assault matched those taken in the Las Vegas case. Cody said a records search on Pirate at the time revealed "numerous convictions for sexual assaults out of California and New Mexico."
According to Cody, a January DNA sample obtained from Pirate in Fairbanks was matched in April to samples from the Ambassador Hotel rape by the Las Vegas police crime lab.
A public defender was appointed for Pirate at his initial appearance in Nevada court Thursday, records said, before he was held without bail.