Sex offender charged with rape, burglary near Silver Lake

Published 1:30 am Saturday, November 26, 2016

EVERETT — A surveillance camera across the street captured the stranger standing in the shadows, hiding behind a bush in the front lawn, waiting for the young woman to reach her front door.

The woman, 23, had taken the bus home from work. She was wearing a purple backpack and stopped first to get the mail.

“As the victim walks across her yard, the figure moves around the opposite side of the bush to remain hidden. Once the victim unlocks her door, the suspect shoots across the yard, across the victim’s porch and shoves the victim inside before closing the door,” Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Bob Langbehn wrote of the video footage.

Once inside the house, the man pulled a gun on the woman, who until then believed a friend was playing a prank on her. He ordered her not to look at him. He was wearing a mask. The pistol was silver.

She asked him to stop, telling the stranger he was hurting her. The man told her to shut up and act like she enjoyed what he was doing to her. When he was finished, he pointed the gun at her, asked her if she had anything to give him.

She didn’t have any money but told him her cellphone was in her backpack. He ordered her to sit on the bed. If she moved, he would kill her, the man said. He took her backpack and fled the Silver Lake-area house. The woman grabbed her phone from her jacket when she heard the front door slam. She hid under her bed and then called out. When no one responded, she locked herself in a bathroom and dialed her mom.

She stayed on the phone with her mother, who called 911, until sheriff’s deputies arrived.

“The victim was reluctant to answer the door but finally did so after being given assurances that the men standing on her porch were in fact law enforcement officers,” Langbehn wrote.

Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives believe a registered sex offender was behind the Oct. 29 attack. Prosecutors earlier this week charged Daniel Jacob Miltenberger, 28, with first-degree rape and first-degree burglary.

Miltenberger remains held on $1 million bail. He is expected to be arraigned Monday in Snohomish County Superior Court.

Investigators allege that Miltenberger was identified through genetic evidence collected during the victim’s sexual assault examination. Lisa Collins with the State Patrol crime lab in Marysville notified detectives less than a week after the attack that a genetic profile had been gleaned from the evidence. It matched Miltenberger’s profile.

He had been required to provide a DNA sample for a federal database years ago, when he was convicted of his first felony.

Detectives quickly learned that Miltenberger is a registered sex offender in the Everett area. They contacted him at his residence the night of Collins’ call. “Not only did the defendant match the general description given by the victim (white male, 5’7”, medium build), but he also had a cast on his right arm just as the victim described,” Langbehn wrote.

Miltenberger allegedly agreed to speak with detectives. They asked him how he hurt his arm. He told them he’d been trying to fix a blender. Detectives commented that it must be difficult to try to repair a blender with a cast on.

Miltenberger reportedly replied, “I do all kinds of crazy (expletive) with this on,” court papers said.

The defendant declined to give police a statement without an attorney present. Detectives stopped questioning him.

Investigators obtained a warrant to search Miltenberger’s home and to obtain a DNA sample from him. Detectives reported finding the victim’s wallet inside the defendant’s residence. They also found the library book the woman recently had checked out.

Investigators also discovered several masks, air soft pistols and a red and black shirt as described by the victim.

At the time of the attack, Miltenberger was awaiting trial for violating a protection order obtained by his former girlfriend. Miltenberger is accused of having contact with the woman, despite a court order to stay away. The woman told police that Miltenberger threw a lit cigarette inside her tank top and punched her in the face.

Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.