BELLE FOURCHE, S.D. – A man who broke into the home of a Belle Fourche woman and raped her has been sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Shane Boice, 34, was sentenced by Judge Michael Day in Butte County Wednesday after pleading guilty to second-degree rape.
Boice reached a plea deal with prosecutors in which two burglary counts were dropped.
The incident occurred in April of 2012 and the case was solved through forensic genealogy, the process where a D-N-A sample is matched to a suspect through their relatives.
Boice, who currently resides in Nisland, lived in Belle Fourche at the time of the crime.
Police tested DNA obtained from the crime scene at the time but found no match within DNA databases.
The police department and South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation — led by former Special Agent Brett Garland — continued to investigate the case.
It was broke open in May of 2018 when a D-N-A sample was sent to a genetic lab and it brought back samples of people related to the D-N-A found at the crime scene.
After further investigation and getting a D-N-A sample from Boice, he was arrested in January of 2019.
