A Lansdale man who was recently released from county jail is back behind bars after investigators in Lansdale Borough allegedly linked him to a 2014 burglary on East Fourth Street.
Patrick Carpenter, 29, was charged last week with felony counts of burglary and trespassing, along with misdemeanor counts of theft by unlawful taking and receiving stolen property, after DNA taken from a pair of knives found at the scene was found to match a sample provided by Carpenter, police said.
Carpenter is currently being held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in lieu of $5,000 cash bail, court records show.
The initial investigation began on July 21, 2014, when Lansdale Police were dispatched to the unit block of East Fourth Street for a report of an early-morning burglary. The homeowner told police that her dog started barking around 2:50 a.m. and when she went downstairs, she noticed her purse was no longer where she left it. The woman told police she located her purse in an enclosed back porch and noticed that a window had been opened, and investigators said the window had a broken hinge and believed someone with prior knowledge of the broken window had used it to gain access to the home.
The woman reported to police that $150 to $200 in cash had been stolen from her purse.
Investigators found a plastic lawn chair on the ground outside of the window, along with shoe prints and a six-inch steak knife, according to the criminal complaint. Two knives were recovered from the scene, including the six-inch steak knife outside near the chair, which the woman didn’t recognize, and a wood-handled kitchen knife, which was found on the kitchen floor and belonged to her, according to police.
Both knives were sent to the Pennsylvania State Police Bethlehem Regional Laboratory on July 25, 2014, for a blood analysis, police said. The case then went cold for nine years, until investigators received a DNA analysis in July 2023 from the Pennsylvania State Police Forensic DNA Division indicating a positive match had been made between blood tested from the knives and a previous sample belonging to Carpenter, police said.
Investigators then requested a reference sample from Carpenter, which also resulted in a DNA match, according to police.
Charges were officially filed against Carpenter on Sept. 12, and he was subsequently arraigned by Magisterial District Judge Maureen Coggins and taken to county jail after failing to post bail. His next appearance on the new charges is a preliminary hearing in front of Magisterial District Judge Ed Levine on Oct. 18 at 1:30 p.m.
No explanation was provided within the affidavit of probable cause explaining the nine-year delay in processing the blood samples from the 2014 incident.
Carpenter was recently released from county jail after being sentenced to 377 days of time served and probation stemming from an August 2019 burglary and assault along the 700 block of West Third Street in Lansdale. While on bail for those charges in April 2021, Carpenter was also arrested on child pornography charges, which he pleaded guilty to in May and was sentenced to 60-days-to-12-months in county jail, followed by probation.
Sentencing notes for the child pornography conviction indicate Carpenter must register as a Tier One sex offender under Megan’s Law, and he must also undergo sex offender supervision, a psycho-sexual evaluation, and refrain from having unsupervised contact with children.
The notes also state the sentence was initially to be served on consecutive weekends, however Carpenter was later forced to serve the sentence via straight time after getting into a fight and creating “a hazardous situation/disruption of institutional routine.”
All suspects and defendants are innocent until proven guilty. This story was compiled using police reports, court records and the affidavit of probable cause.
See also:
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