Just after midnight Nov. 20, 1992, a frantic 23-year-old woman pounded on the door of a home at Vessup Bay on St. Thomas. She was naked.

Less than an hour before, she had accepted a ride from the Red Hook dock from a powerfully built man who claimed to be a police officer. But instead of taking her home, he drove her to a secluded spot on Vessup Beach. There he stripped, choked, beat, raped and sodomized her before he drove off, leaving her naked and battered.

Doctors at St. Thomas Hospital examined the victim and confirmed she had been raped and sodomized. Following standard practice, the hospital staff prepared a rape kit, which includes swabs from the victim's body cavities and scrapings from beneath her fingernails. They turned the kit over to the police, who were then supposed to send it to the FBI crime laboratory in Washington, D.C., for DNA and other analysis.

To this day the police can't say what they did with the kit.

As a result, charges against 29-year-old Calito Oquendio, the St. John resident the victim identified and accused of the rape, were dropped. He had faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years to life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors tried until the last minute to get police to locate the kit.

On Feb. 4, 1994, three days before Oquendio's trial was to begin and 15 months after the crime was committed, acting U.S. Attorney Ronald Jennings asked that the case be postponed because "the Virgin Islands Police Department has failed to submit evidence to the FBI Laboratory as previously requested."

By June, when it was clear the kit wouldn't be found, Jennings gave up and asked that the case be dismissed.

Sgt. Antoinette Jackson is the officer who was responsible for sending the evidence to the FBI. She says she sent it.

Jackson had also lost the evidence in two other cases, and after this one she was finally transferred from the evidence room.

Dropping the charges against Oquendio was especially frustrating for prosecutors because they knew he attacked a woman four months after the Vessup Bay rape.

On March 21, 1993, the 250-pound, 6-foot 5-inch Oquendio offered Marva Smith a ride home in his truck. She accepted.

Smith told Oquendio where she lived, but when they got to the house he drove past it. When Smith asked him to stop, Oquendio said he was simply driving to the corner to turn around.

She grew worried and demanded that he stop and let her out. At that point, she told police, Oquendio punched her in the side and tugged her hair, pulling her head down toward the seat.

Oquendio warned her he had a gun under the seat, Smith told police.

Terrified that she would be raped or killed, Smith tore away from Oquendio and flung herself through the window of the moving truck. She fell face first onto the asphalt road.

She broke her jaw, lost all her top teeth and badly cut and bruised her face and legs in the fall.

Smith was able to give police a description of Oquendio and picked him out in a photo lineup.

She also described the truck from which she jumped. Police traced the truck to its owner, who said Oquendio had also borrowed it on the night of the rape.

Several days later, Oquendio was arrested and charged with kidnapping and third-degree assault. He faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years in jail and a $3,000 fine.

But June 15, 1993, as part of an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office, he pleaded guilty to third-degree assault, and the kidnapping charge was dropped. He received a five-year sentence and was ordered to pay Smith $30,000 in restitution.

He is scheduled to be released in 1998.