DNA trail links Schieber killing to 2 Phila. rapes

Semen and blood found in the Wharton student's apartment match that of a Center City rapist. More than nine months after Wharton doctoral student Shannon Schieber was brutally murdered in her Center City apartment, the Philadelphia Police Department has made its first big break in the case. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in Friday's edition that police have matched DNA evidence found in Schieber's bedroom to evidence collected at the scenes of two 1997 rapes and now have a preliminary description of the suspect. All three crimes occurred within blocks of each other. One of the rape victims will be asked by police to help prepare a sketch of her attacker, which will then be distributed in the Fitler Square area where Schieber lived. Last night, Sylvester Schieber, Shannon Schieber's father, confirmed that police told him everything that was in the Inquirer article, which cited unnamed police sources. The friendly, outgoing and civic-minded Schieber, 23 -- a Duke University graduate and one of only four doctoral students in Wharton's Insurance and Risk Management Department -- was strangled to death in her second-floor apartment on the 200 block of South 23rd Street on May 7 last year at about 2 a.m. Schieber's brother found her naked body 12 hours after she died when she failed to show up for work or meet him for a scheduled lunch. The two rapes occurred nearby, on the 1600 and 1700 blocks of Pine Street. The break is the first major lead police have had since they cleared an ex-boyfriend of Schieber's, who she had told friends was stalking her in the weeks before her death. Philadelphia Police officials investigating the case could not be reached for comment. The decision by the Inquirer to publish the report drew fire from both the police and Schieber's family. Sylvester Schieber said that although the lead has given him hope of finding the man who killed his daughter, the report may have hindered the search by giving the murderer too much information. "I think there's a justifiable concern on the part of the homicide people about having signalled the murderer that they linked him to other cases," he said. Schieber added that he was not informed by police of the lead until they found out that the Inquirer was running the story. Although a post-mortem examination showed that his daughter had not been sexually assaulted, police found semen on her bedspread, leading them to believe the killer ejaculated there after murdering her. Police also found blood with matching DNA near the sliding glass door through which they believe the killer entered the apartment. According to the Inquirer, police have interviewed more than 100 suspects and have compared the DNA samples found in Schieber's apartment with samples taken from 63 other crime scenes that occurred in the same area and remain unsolved. It was through such comparisons that police matched the two rapes with Schieber's murder. The Schieber family is currently engaged in a lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia for mishandling the original 911 call that brought police to Shannon Schieber's apartment the night she was murdered. Police were called to the scene by a neighbor who heard screams emanating from the apartment, but they left after no one answered their knocks on Schieber's door. The Schiebers contend that Shannon was still alive when police initially arrived. The Philadelphia Police Department has cleared the officers involved of any negligence in the case.