Tarpon Springs, Fla. (970 WFLA) - Detectives credit a software upgrade for helping them identify a suspect in a rape that happened 25 years ago. Jeffrey W. Hogston, 49, now faces a sexual battery charge stemming from the attack in the early hours of February 8, 1992.
A Pinellas County Sheriff's Office news release says that on that date, Hogston, then 24, asked a woman he had met at a Clearwater bar to give him a ride to a motel in Tarpon Springs. He asked her to drive around to the back of the motel, and there, deputies say, he sexually assaulted her several times in the back seat of her car.
Deputies found a business card in the car with the rapist's latent fingerprints on it, but technology at the time could not read the prints well enough to make an identification. Last year, the Sheriff's Office got new Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) technology that could, and it pointed to Hogston as their suspect.
Deputies arrested Hogston in Palm Harbor Friday night.