Police said new DNA work helped identify a suspect more than three decades after a 14-year-old girl was attacked near Parkway North High School.
CLAYTON, MO — A 56-year-old Texas man has been charged in a 1992 sexual assault case in St. Louis County after investigators said advances in DNA analysis helped them identify a suspect in an attack on a teenage girl walking home from a high school soccer game.
Miguel Canizares, of Spring, Texas, was charged April 9 with two counts of sodomy and one count of first-degree sexual abuse in a case that had remained unsolved for 33 years. Authorities said the arrest marks a major step for a victim who was 14 at the time and for a cold case unit that has been reexamining older evidence with newer testing methods. Police and prosecutors also said the case could extend beyond Missouri because Canizares lived in several states in recent years, raising questions about whether other victims may exist.
The charges stem from an attack on Oct. 5, 1992, near Parkway North High School in west St. Louis County. Investigators said the girl had attended a soccer game and was walking home when a man came up behind her as she neared a wooded area. Police said he grabbed her, pulled her into the woods, forced her to undress and sexually assaulted her. Lt. Col. Jerry Lohr of the St. Louis County Police Department said the girl was threatened during and after the assault before she was able to run away. “Unfortunately, in this case, that victim, who was 14 at the time, suffered an unimaginable attack,” Lohr said as officials announced the charges Tuesday in Clayton. The case stayed open for years with no arrest, even as evidence collected in 1992 was preserved.
Investigators said the breakthrough came after the department’s Cold Case Unit reopened the file and focused on evidence that could benefit from newer lab methods. Lohr said Detective John Bradley brought the case forward last year, and that over the past five to six months investigators were able to connect old evidence to a suspect through DNA analysis. “We were able to kind of piece it together based on some of the evidence that we had recovered in 1992,” Lohr said. Police identified the suspect as Canizares, now 56, and said he was arrested near Houston on April 9. Some reports listed the arrest location as Shenandoah, Texas, while officials otherwise described it as the Houston area. He is being held on a $500,000 cash-only bond while extradition to Missouri moves ahead. Court records available in public reports did not answer several other key questions Tuesday, including whether he had retained a lawyer who could speak for him or whether he had entered a plea.
The case has drawn attention not only because of its age, but because it shows how old evidence can gain new value as forensic testing improves. Lohr said the department is prioritizing older cases with preserved DNA because methods now available were not possible even a few years ago. He said investigators look for files where the evidence is still usable and where newer analysis may offer the best chance of identifying a suspect. Prosecuting Attorney Melissa Price-Smith said the filing of charges brought both relief and emotion to the woman who survived the attack as a teenager. “It’s been 33 years,” Price-Smith said. “We didn’t think that this would ever happen.” The attack happened in a place that many county residents would recognize as part of an ordinary school-day routine: a teenage student leaving a game and heading home on foot. That detail has kept the case vivid for investigators, who described it as a long-unsolved assault on a child in a suburban part of the county.
Authorities said the investigation may not end with the Missouri charges. Police said Canizares lived in the St. Louis area until 2015 and later lived in Orlando, New Orleans and Texas. Lohr said active investigations are now underway in other states. He did not say how many agencies are involved, whether any additional complaints have been filed, or whether evidence from other jurisdictions has already been reviewed. Still, officials said the suspect’s alleged behavior in the 1992 case led them to believe there may be other victims. Ben Walker, an FBI official in St. Louis, said law enforcement wants anyone with relevant information to come forward, no matter how much time has passed. That public appeal signaled that investigators are still trying to determine whether the 1992 assault was an isolated crime or part of a broader pattern that crossed state lines. For now, officials have not announced any additional charges outside St. Louis County.
The announcement also underscored the slow, procedural nature of cold case work. Unlike a fast-moving investigation built on live witnesses and fresh evidence, this one depended on the careful storage of records and biological evidence from the early 1990s, followed by a fresh review decades later. Police did not disclose what type of DNA testing was used or whether genetic genealogy played any role in the identification. They also did not publicly describe any earlier suspects, whether Canizares had been interviewed in 1992, or what led detectives to revisit this file before others. Those unknowns leave major parts of the case history unanswered for now. Even so, prosecutors said the filing itself matters because it moves the case from an unsolved attack to a pending criminal prosecution. It also offers a public acknowledgment that the victim’s account, first given as a child, remained central to a case that investigators said they never abandoned.
At Tuesday’s briefing, officials mixed the language of investigation with the language of reassurance. Price-Smith said the case should send a message to victims and families in other unsolved cases that they have not been forgotten. Lohr spoke in similar terms, saying the department is searching older files for evidence that can now be tested in ways that were not available before. The scene described by police has not changed in its basic outline over the years: a school event, a walk home, a wooded area and an attacker who vanished before he could be identified. What changed was the science. That shift turned preserved evidence into a fresh lead and, eventually, a charge sheet with a name on it. For the woman at the center of the case, officials said, the moment brought gratitude along with relief after more than three decades of waiting for an arrest.
The case now stands at the extradition stage, with Canizares expected in St. Louis County within about two weeks of the April 14 announcement if that schedule holds. The next major milestone will be his return to Missouri for court proceedings on the three felony charges.
Author note: Last updated April 15, 2026.