Charlotte sex assault cold case solved after 27 years. The key? A cigarette butt
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say they cracked a 27-year-old sexual assault cold case because of a small item detectives collected from a trash can in Asheville: a cigarette butt.
Police compared the DNA from the cigarette butt to a sample collected from a victim who said she was raped at her south Charlotte home on Jan. 9, 1999, finding it matched a 48-year-old Asheville man.
Eric Lee Howard was charged with crimes including two second-degree rape charges on Tuesday, a CMPD news release said.
Ski mask, cigarette smell
For nearly 30 years, police searched for a man who wore a ski mask, forcing his way into a home on Garamond Court in Charlotte. The woman thought she heard her doorbell. Her dog began barking and she opened the door.
A man who smelled like cigarettes knocked her to the ground. He forced her into different rooms of her home while assaulting her before making her close her eyes and count to 100 while he left.
“After she heard the chime on her door alarm as the suspect left, she called a friend for help,” the affidavit said.
She was transported to a hospital, and vaginal swabs were collected for DNA evidence. But no matches came back, and the case went cold in 1999.
A breakthrough came in May 2022, when police sent the swabs to an outside laboratory for forensic investigative genetic genealogy.
A U.S. Department of Justice policy on investigative genetic genealogy said the technique combines traditional DNA analysis with genealogical research. This method identified Howard as a suspect.
DNA was also key in the recent arrest in the homicide of Kim Thomas at her Cotswold in 1990. CMPD said new DNA technology enabled them to determine Thomas’ killer was Marion Gales, a man the department previously dismissed as a potential suspect.
That case remains pending.
Howard lived near victim in 90s
The match between the vaginal swab and Howard’s cigarette butt came in a crime lab report in January, the affidavit said.
Detectives also determined Howard lived near the home of the victim in the 1990s and later moved to Asheville, CMPD said. The affidavit said Howard was homeless in Asheville.
The department worked with the Asheville Police Department to conduct surveillance of Howard.
“On October 1, 2025, Asheville PD officers observer Eric Lee Howard dispose of a cigarette in a public trash receptacle and walk away from it,” a CMPD affidavit said. “The cigarette butt discarded by Eric Lee Howard was submitted to the CMPD crime lab for DNA analysis and a male DNA profile was obtained.”
Howard is being held in the Mecklenburg County Jail on no bond, according to court and jail records.
