DNA test results helped Ansonia police identify a bank robbery suspect from more than five years ago.
Dennis Wilson, 42, of Waterbury, was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday to face charges as a suspect in the March, 4, 2009 robbery of Naugatuck Valley Savings Bank at 75 Tremont Street in Ansonia. About $8,359 in cash was stolen from the bank during the 9:10 a.m. robbery.
The robber, described as a black man wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt, fled the scene toward the building that houses Big Y and Bob's Stores in Ansonia before police arrived, witnesses told police. Police located the vehicle parked nearby due to dry marks in the pavement after snowfall that year and seized a cigarette butt from the area that the suspect may have left behind, police said.
Officers arrested Wilson on Oct. 29, 2014 after obtaining a warrant following DNA results for seized crime scene items that the state laboratory released in July of 2013, police said. The DNA test identified a convicted robber, Wilson, as a suspect while he was imprisoned in New York for a separate case, police said. Investigators confirmed Wilson's DNA matched evidence containing DNA through samples obtained from him in prison, according to police.
Detectives picked him up at Otisville Federal Correctional Facility in New York and took him into custody once they had a warrant and formally charged him when he was back in Ansonia.
Police charged Wilson with first-degree robbery and second-degree larceny.
He was scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 18 to enter a plea, but as of 1:19 p.m., his case file had not been updated.
