A Port Matilda man who pleaded guilty to raping four Penn State students was sentenced Friday to 29.5 to 61 years in prison.

Jeffrey Fields, 37, pleaded guilty in March to 17 of the 19 charges filed against him, according to a news release from the Centre County District Attorney’s Office.

According to court documents, Fields was arrested July 21, 2020, after DNA connected him to four different rapes of Penn State students between Aug. 22, 2010, and July 16, 2017. The victims were 19 and 20 years old. In at least two of the cases, the suspect struck the women in the face, with the third victim being left unconscious in the attack, court documents show.

While police found that the rapes were connected, it took years to identify a suspect, which was made possible through DNA technology and advancements in ancestry databases.

During investigation of the Aug. 22, 2010, rape, State College police uploaded the DNA profile into CODIS. On Jan. 28, 2011, police investigating a second rape also uploaded the DNA profile into CODIS. In August 2011, police were notified those two DNA samples were an exact match.

On April 3, 2011, police investigating a third rape also uploaded DNA samples to CODIS and also were able to recover skin cells that did not belong to the victim, court documents state. Later, CODIS matched the DNA in all three cases, police reported.

On July 16, 2017, police investigated a fourth rape and found the Y-chromosone DNA matched the DNA profiles in the three previous cases.

The samples were sent to DNA Solutions in Oklahoma City on May 29, 2018, and DNA Solutions sent the information and analysis to Parabon/Snapshot where it was loaded into an open database, GEDmatch. The profile was later uploaded to the

FamilyTreeDNA.com database and a possible family tree was identified. Police reported that several family members submitted DNA samples to Parabon and branches of the family tree were eliminated as to containing the possible suspect.

It wasn’t until June 25, 2020, that samples were collected from a couple in the family tree.

Once those samples were analyzed, the results suggested the couple were the parents of the suspect, police reported. The analysis showed the couple were a 99.99% percent match to the suspect.

Also during the investigation, police found that the couple only had one child, a son, and that he was employed at a State College business from the third quarter of 2010 to the present.

Police obtained a search warrant for Fields to collect DNA, and he was taken into custody July 21, 2020. Bail was denied.

Court documents show that charges were waived to court and jury selection was scheduled in February. Fields instead entered guilty pleas March 10 to four felony counts each of rape forcible compulsion, sexual assault, rape threat of forcible compulsion.

In addition, he pleaded guilty to felony charges of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse forcible compulsion, IDSI threat forcible compulsion, criminal attempt IDSI threat and forcible compulsion and misdemeanor charges of simple assault.