Baltimore County police have cleared their 50th cold case since 2005 with the arrest of a Baltimore City man in connection with a 1987 rape, officers said Monday.

Lewis Phinix Thornton Jr., 38, a registered sexually violent offender, was charged with the two-decade-old rape of a then-23-year-old woman in Parkville.

Police say Thornton grabbed the woman after she got out of her car on the 6600 block of English Oak Drive, forced her to a wooded area nearby and raped her on Nov. 1, 1987, around 8:30 p.m.

He threatened to kill the victim, implying that he had a knife, and physically assaulted her when she fought him, charging documents state. Thornton also stole $16 from the victim, police said.

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The woman was treated at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, where Dr. Rudiger Breitenecker was archiving hundreds of samples from sexual assaults, hoping one day they might prove useful.

Detectives searched for the rapist at the time but could not find him, police said.

Then a break finally came in the case.

On July 24, 2008, the Maryland State Police Crime Lab told Baltimore County police they had made a match of Thornton’s DNA with the evidence from the scene through the state’s Combined DNA Index System.

Thornton is on the state’s sex offender registry because of a 1988 conviction from a first-degree rape in Baltimore City.

Thornton is the 33rd person Baltimore County police have charged through a cold case DNA hit since 2005. His arrest marks the 50th case closed through those arrests, according to agency spokesman Bill Toohey.

In June, Breitenecker was honored by state and county law enforcement officials for his foresight in stockpiling crime scene evidence in the 1970s, long before anyone had heard the term “DNA fingerprinting.”

Baltimore County Police Chief James Johnson called the doctor “one of my most valuable detectives.”

lbroadwater@baltimoreexaminer.com