SANTA ANA — A 51-year-old man was convicted Tuesday of kidnapping and raping a 6-year-old girl in Santa Ana in 2012.

Francisco Javier Lopez was convicted of kidnapping to commit rape, four counts of oral copulation or sexual penetration with a child 10 years or younger, and five counts of forcible lewd acts on a child, all felonies.

Lopez was implicated due to improved DNA , which led to his arrest in a cold case when scientists in the state’s crime laboratory were able to search for DNA connections to female defendants in 2018. Until then, familiar DNA markers were limited to male defendants, but the change led them to a “close relative” of Lopez.

Santa Ana police then began surveillance of Lopez, which led to the collection of “discarded evidence” that provided investigators with Lop

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