Carols Case News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

How critical would you say the rape kits are in helping you solve these cases? >> they're vital to our investigations, no question about that. >> reporter: sergeant welsh turned to the team here at the southwestern institute of forensic sciences. he asked them to test every single untested swab sitting in their freezer. there were thousands of them dating back to 1970. not a single one had ever been processed. the sergeant says decades ago, law enforcement just didn't have the tools to solve these cases. dna technology wasn't available to them until the 1990s. >> we've solved well over 80 case...

>> we've solved well over 80 cases from the early '80s and early '90s. >> reporter: from the rape kits. >> from the rape kits. >> reporter: carol's case was one of them. just four months, four months after carol's kit was located and analyzed, the man who raped her was identified. but adding insult to injury, joseph houston couldn't be charged in carol's case because the statute of limitations had run out. it turns out after carol's rape, he kidnapped another woman and exposed himself to a child. carol believes if her rape kit had been analyzed years ago, her attacker might have been picked up...

Dating back to 1970. not a single one had ever been processed. the sergeant says decades ago, law enforcement just didn't have the tools to solve these cases. dna technology wasn't available to them until the 1990s. >> we've solved well over 80 cases from the early '80s and early '90s. >> reporter: from the rape kits. >> from the rape kits. >> reporter: carol's case was one of them. just four months, four months after carol's kit was located and analyzed, the man who raped her was identified. but adding insult to injury, joseph houston couldn't be charged in carol's case because the statute of...