Jan 13, 2019 4 min read

When a 10-year-old girl was kidnapped from Somerset County in 1999, state police said her assailant sexually assaulted her and then let her go in Fayette County.

It was evidence collected by state police in Uniontown, when a passerby saw the girl walking and stopped to pick her up near Markleysburg, that ultimately led to his arrest.

Timothy D. Nelson Jr., 50, of Cumberland, Md., was arraigned Thursday on charges of kidnapping, rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, unlawful restraint, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, terroristic threats, indecent assault and interference with custody of a child.

Trooper Steve Lemani said after Nelson sexually assaulted the girl, he used a brown paper bag to wipe off himself and had the young girl do the same, before throwing the bag out the car window. Police in Fayette County recovered the bag, preserving it as evidence.

Nearly two decades ago, it was tested, and while DNA and fingerprints were found, they weren’t a match to anyone already on file in the FBI’s database, Lemani said. Police later learned that there were two other cases in the area of Hagerstown, Md., similar to the one in Somerset County, which happened before the 10-year-old was abducted. While that gave police new leads in the case, the prints and DNA still didn’t come back as matching anyone.

As technology continued to advance, police remained hopeful they could find a match, Lemani said. A December 2018 test did just that, matching the partial fingerprint on the bag to Nelson, according to court paperwork. He had been arrested a few years ago, Lemani said, and his prints had become accessible to law enforcement.

Trooper Jeffrey Brock, who was assigned the case in 1999 and filed the charges against Nelson, teared up Thursday as he discussed the arrest during a press conference.

“It’s a whirlwind of emotion,” Brock said.

But he was quick to stress that while he felt relieved to clear the once-cold case, “It’s about bringing closure to the girls.

“They move on, they have their lives that they lead, but I have a hard time believing they weren’t thinking, where did he go, is he alive, is he living down the street from me,” Brock said. “It’s the most important thing to me that they can bring that to a close.”

Brock, who had 25 years with the state police on Jan. 3, said he kept the kidnapping case with him, even when he left the crime unit in Somerset County in 2005.

He said he never stopped thinking about the Somerset County victim, hoping to bring her assailant to justice.

Lemani said police were able to make contact with Nelson in Cumberland, where he was being interviewed by police there in an unrelated case. They served a warrant on him for a DNA swab, and he was held in Maryland until he could be brought back to Pennsylvania for his Thursday arraignment. Somerset County Magisterial District Judge William Seger set Nelson’s bond at $750,000, which Nelson did not post.

As police wait to talk to Nelson, Lemani asked other departments in the area to consider whether they may have similar cases and contact the FBI if they do.

He said luck and hard work led to the arrest of Nelson, who’s been a resident of Maryland for about 20 years.

As for Brock, now a part of the state police Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s drug law enforcement division, he said when he heard the FBI was able to match the fingerprint found on the paper bag, he was overcome and immediately thought about how he’d tell the victim whose case he’d kept with him for nearly two decades.

“I made sure that I did the announcement in person,” he said, declining to say more about how the now-adult reacted to the news.