Two cold-case home invasion rapes in California in the 1980s have been connected to four similar sexual assaults in other states, the Ventura County District Attorney's Office announced Thursday.

Sean Patrick McNulty, who grew up in Ventura and attended Buena High School, died by suicide in 1997 in Emmett Township, Michigan, "after he became a suspect" in a 1993 rape in Bloomington, Indiana, the VCDA said in a news release.

Before that final assault, however, McNulty had committed home-invasion rapes in Ventura in 1982 and 1983, in Okemos, Michigan, in 1994; in Birmingham, Michigan, in 1995; and in Columbus, Ohio, in 1997, officials said, noting the same DNA profile was recovered in each of these five attacks.

A joint investigation by local, state and federal law enforcement in multiple

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