On July 25, 1987, a woman returned to her home in Sidney, Montana, after work. She locked her front door. The back door was unlocked. She went to sleep after removing her hearing aids and glasses and was later awoken by a man lying beside her.
The woman, identified as K.B., said she saw the man for less than a minute before he grabbed her and placed a pillowcase over her head. The man attempted intercourse as she lay on her stomach, but failed, then turned her on her back and raped her. He then attempted anal penetration but stopped after the woman pleaded against it.
The victim was only able to provide police with general attributes of the perpetrator. She said he was a white man in his 20s or 30s, between 145 and 160 pounds, average height, dark hair, with a muscular build, wearing round-toed boots and a belt with a heavy buckle. Because of her poor hearing and sight, she ceased to go further in her description..
About a year and a half later, in January 1989, 24-year-old Paul Kordonowy was arrested for a similar attack in nearby Fairview, Montana. The nature of this rape was similar to the 1987 attack. The victim, V.N.O., said that she woke up at 2 a.m. on January 21, 1989, and saw a man sitting on the end of her bed. He grabbed her and raped her twice, as she was lying on her back and as she was lying face down.
Kordonowy was arrested days later. V.N.O. identified Kordonowy as her attacker. He was charged with sexual intercourse without consent, robbery, and aggravated kidnapping.
Because of the similarity between the description of the attack in Fairview and the 1987 rape in Sidney, which was about 12 miles from Fairview, Kordonowy became a suspect in the rape of K.B.
Forensic testing was performed on head and pubic hairs recovered from the rape kit and the bedding by Arnold Melnikoff, the former head of the Montana Forensic Science Laboratory. He reported that the head and pubic hairs from Kordonowy could not be distinguished from hairs recovered from the rape kit of K.B. In addition, Julie Long, a serologist at the state crime laboratory, reported that she did blood typing and the results included Kordonowy.
Kordonowy was then charged with one count of aggravated burglary and one count of sexual intercourse without consent.
In August 1989, Kordonowy pled guilty to the charges in the Fairview rape case. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
In January 1990, Kordonowy went to trial in Richland County District Court for the Sidney rape case. The victim described the attack, but was unable to identify Kordonowy as her attacker. V.N.O. also testified and identified him as her attacker in Fairview.
Melnikoff testified that he could distinguish head and pubic hairs from one Caucasian to another in 99 out of 100 cases. He then testified that the head and pubic hairs from Kordonowy could not be distinguished from the suspect hairs recovered from the investigation, and that the chances of multiple hairs from another person’s hair being consistent with the multiple crime scene hairs from the same crime scene was 1 in 10,000.
Long testified that she examined semen found on vaginal swaps taken from K.B. and from semen found on two pairs of K.B.’s underwear. Long said that Kordonowy could not be excluded as the source of an enzyme known as the H substance found in one of the vaginal swabs and on both pairs of underwear. Long also found the A enzyme present. She testified that the enzyme did not come from K.B. or Kordonowy, but could have come from K.B.’s boyfriend, who had sex with her 72 hours before the attack. Or, Long said, it could have been the result of sugars produced by bacteria.
On January 18, 1990, Kordonowy was convicted of both charges. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison to be served concurrent to his sentence in the other case.
In December 1991, the Montana Supreme Court upheld his conviction and sentence.
In October 2002, Jimmy Ray Bromgard, who had been convicted of a 1987 rape in Billings, Montana, largely on the basis of similar testimony by Melnikoff, was exonerated by DNA testing. The Innocence Project had obtained the testing for Bromgard. As part of the re-investigation of that case, the Innocence Project demonstrated that Melnikoff had testified falsely about the hair comparison evidence. His testimony was improper because there was not adequate empirical data on the frequency of various class characteristics in human hair to characterize whether consistency is a rare or common event.
Lawyers for Kordonowy then obtained DNA testing of the evidence in K.B.’s case. The testing excluded Kordonowy as the source of the biological evidence. In May 2003, the prosecution dismissed his case. Kordonowy remained incarcerated for the Fairview rape case.
In March 2004, Melnikoff, who had left the Montana state crime laboratory to work in the Washington state crime laboratory, was fired after an audit uncovered sloppy procedures and evidence that he inflated his testimony to bolster prosecutions.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 02-19-2026
