Molecular Damage

Levinson finally agreed to be examined at the advocacy center by Kim Yedowitz, a registered nurse who also serves as chairperson of the Arizona Sexual Assault Network.

Yedowitz prepared to do what she'd done more than 600 times before -- try to put the alleged victim at ease, get a history, identify areas of trauma, and take blood and body samples necessary to provide authorities with DNA.

Jackie Mercandetti

Shawn Dirks, January 2004

Lori Levinson (left), at a Phoenix police station a few hours after her alleged rape. Investigators took photos (right) of scratches that Levinson said she'd gotten during the "asualt."

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More About

• Shawn Dirks
• Lori Levinson
• Darren Burch
• Sexual Offenses
• Crime

But Levinson declined to give her any details of the alleged rape, and generally remained uncooperative.

Yedowitz later said Levinson had told her in response to a direct question that Dirks' penis "went into her vagina," not her anus.

The nurse observed the scratches on Levinson's lower back and buttocks, and also noted four tiny tears "outside the anal area in, basically the crack or the fold between the buttocks cheeks."

Last November, Yedowitz said in a deposition that she couldn't tell if the scratches and the tiny tears had been self-inflicted or came during an assault.

About the back scratches, she testified, "You will also notice that she had a broken fingernail with two pointed edges on it. That to me leaves a high degree of suspicion about the majority of the injuries that are on her body."

And Yedowitz also said the outer anal tears were very unusual -- she'd never seen anything like it in an assault -- and she suspected Levinson could have caused them by intentionally overspreading her buttocks.

Detective Burch obtained a search warrant to take blood from Levinson to determine her blood-alcohol level (it was 0.11, over the legal limit).

But Burch inexplicably never asked for a warrant to get scrapings under Levinson's fingernails, or under Shawn Dirks' nails. The results of those scrapings could have answered many questions, including who had inflicted the scratches on Levinson's back. (Interestingly, Dirks' nails are bitten to the quick, and his wife says they've been that way since she met him in 1998.)

In the hours after Levinson had made her allegations, Dirks ate at a restaurant with a police sergeant, then awaited his turn for testing at the Family Advocacy Center.

He says he urinated at some point, and certainly touched his penis while doing so.

Dirks says he phoned his police union representative, who advised him not to submit to an interview with Detective Burch, who would be investigating for evidence of a possible crime. That's not uncommon at the Phoenix department, according to officers who work there.

But Dirks readily allowed Kim Yedowitz to take swabs from his penis for DNA testing. "I had no problem with that because I hadn't done anything to be afraid of," he says.

The next day, February 19, Officer Dirks submitted to a mandatory interview by a sergeant from the department's Professional Standards Bureau. Then he returned to duty without missing a shift.

Two days after the alleged assault, Burch got a call from Lori Levinson. But she still didn't want to talk about the rape, and asked only about the results of her blood-alcohol test.

"I need to understand why you don't want to talk to me," Burch told Levinson.

"Well, I have a theory," she replied. "I'm just trying to sort this whole thing out in my head. And to be honest with you, Darren, there's a lot I don't remember."

What she now did remember, Levinson said, was that the rape had happened in the church parking lot, and she'd lost her tooth cap during the rape.

On March 6, Detective Burch drove the swabs taken from Levinson and Dirks to Mesa Police Department's crime lab. Mesa was chosen to avoid any appearance of bias by Phoenix's own lab.

According to Virginia Smart, a senior criminologist with the Mesa lab, Burch summarized the case for her, and told her he believed Levinson's allegations were unfounded.

For the next three months, Dirks says he worked the Ahwatukee beat without a hitch, "having fun, doing my job, learning a lot."

Then, on June 12, 2001, the case took a wildly unexpected turn.

On that date, Smart informed Burch that the swabs collected from the base of Dirks' penis had revealed the presence of Lori Levinson's DNA.

By any standards, the amount of that DNA was extremely small, and Smart also had detected none of Dirks' DNA on swabs taken from Levinson's body.

But she told the detective that could be consistent with a non-ejaculatory rape, or a rape committed by a man wearing a condom.

Smart also said it was highly unlikely that Dirks had picked up Levinson's DNA on his hands while arresting her, and later transferred it to his penis, say, while urinating.

Dirks got the bad news in a phone call from Detective Burch.

"He said the DNA had come back unfavorable toward me," he says. "I said, That's impossible,' something like that. Then I told my wife."

The stunning DNA results convinced Burch and others at Phoenix Police Department that Dirks was guilty of something.

"I believe that the DNA evidence provides the basis that some part of her body came in contact with his penis," Burch said later. "I have no idea what occurred. Could she have grabbed him? Could she have made a sexual advancement towards him? . . . In that case, she would have come in direct contact with his penis, but it would not be a sexual assault as it relates to him as the perpetrator. Or a consensual situation, it would not be a sexual assault."