Diana Deso: 1987 Cold Case, DNA Match, and Kellar’s Guilty Plea

The Diana Deso murder was solved in 2005 when Rae T. Kellar, already serving a state prison term for a 1989 rape, was linked by a DNA database hit to the 1987 rape and killing of the 19-year-old Albany woman he had picked up hitchhiking on Central Avenue. Kellar pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 22 years to life.

What Happened on August 20, 1987

Deso was hitchhiking on Central Avenue in Albany the night of August 20, 1987, when Kellar picked her up. He drove her to a wooded area in the town of North Greenbush, near the Hudson River, sexually assaulted her, and killed her. He tried to dispose of her body in the river, but it caught on a piece of wood near the water’s edge.¹

A passerby found her the following morning, face down and fully clothed on the Rensselaer County side of the Hudson, near the Patroon Island Bridge.² Her parents, James and Maryann Deso, would wait nearly two decades for an answer.

Why the Case Stayed Cold

Kellar was never on investigators’ radar during the original investigation. Roughly eight years after the killing, a review of the evidence pointed to a different suspect, but DNA testing excluded him, and the case stalled again, according to Warren County Sheriff Bud York.³ As prosecutors later put it, Kellar had been “nowhere on the radar screen at all.”¹

How DNA Identified Rae T. Kellar

On May 29, 1989, less than two years after Deso’s murder, Kellar raped a 16-year-old girl from East Greenbush. He was indicted that June and convicted of first-degree rape, first-degree sexual abuse, and third-degree rape.⁴ In 1990, he was sentenced to 8⅓ to 25 years in state prison.¹

Governor George Pataki established a New York State DNA database for convicted sex offenders in 1996. Because Kellar was still serving the 1989 sentence, his profile was collected and entered into that databank in 2002. In May 2004, Dr. Allison Eastman, a forensic scientist at the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center in Albany, ran biological evidence recovered from Deso’s clothing in 1987 against the databank. Kellar came back as a match.²

Rensselaer County District Attorney Patricia DeAngelis later noted that if Kellar had not been convicted of the 1989 rape, or if his sentence had been shorter and he had been released before the database existed, his DNA would never have been collected and the Deso case would have remained unsolved.¹

Investigators then built the case around the hit. The victim of Kellar’s 1989 rape helped them learn more about him and set up an interview; State Police Senior Investigator Steven Ortiz said she “was very instrumental and had a lot of courage.”¹ A second DNA sample taken from Kellar confirmed the match. In December 2004, state police investigators interviewed him twice, and he confessed to raping and killing Diana Deso.²

The Guilty Plea and Sentence

A Rensselaer County grand jury indicted Kellar on three counts of second-degree murder on January 20, 2005.² On June 20, 2005, he pleaded guilty before County Court Judge Patrick J. McGrath to a single count of second-degree murder, a Class A-I felony.¹

The agreed sentence was 22 years to life, to run consecutively with the sentence he was already serving for the 1989 rape. Kellar would not become eligible for parole on the murder conviction until he finished serving that earlier term. Sentencing was scheduled for July 5, 2005.¹

Why No Rape Charge Was Filed for the 1987 Attack

Prosecutors did not file a separate rape charge for the attack on Deso because the statute of limitations had expired. The plea deal still required Kellar to admit to forcibly raping her as part of his guilty plea to the murder count.¹

1
Troy Record. DNA Links Man to ’87 Murder
2
Troy Record. Perseverance and Hard Work Deserve Praise
3
Times Union. Renewed Call for Expanded DNA Databank
4
vLex. People v. Kellar