NEW BRITAIN -- A man who has lived in the city for two years was charged in court Thursday with the 1996 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Jacksonville, Fla.

Robert Shelton Mitchell, 43, who has been living at 8 Kelsey St., with his brother James for some time, was arrested Wednesday afternoon after a DNA match was made on the national database matching evidence from the murder case and Mitchell’s DNA. The match was further confirmed by the Connecticut Forensic Science Laboratory.

Connecticut recently enacted a law that requires all sex offenders to provide a sample of their DNA to police for entry into the database. Mitchell was convicted of a lesser sex offense in Windsor Locks in 2003.

Mitchell was arraigned on a fugitive from justice charge Thursday in New Britain Superior Court and is being held on a $5 million bond. His case was given a standard 30-day continuance, but detectives say they do not think it will be that long before he is extradited to Florida.

Once extradited, he will face charges of sexual battery of a victim under 12 and felony murder. Neither charge requires a bond since both are capital offenses in Florida. The felony murder charge stems from the fact that Morrisette’s death occurred while Mitchell was in the process of committing a felony, the sexual assault.

The victim in the Florida case, Cherie Morrisette, was reported missing to the Jacksonville sheriff’s office on Monday, Dec. 2, 1996. Her body was discovered floating in the St. John’s River six days later on Sunday, Dec. 8. The little girl’s body was about 15 miles away from her home, and according to Florida detectives, evidence indicated she was put into the water close to where she was found, rather than floating downstream.

Original news reports at the time of the murder indicated there was no sign of foul play, but William Werle, a police detective from Florida, said that was "inaccurate information. There was evidence of foul play from the get-go." Werle said that included injuries to the victim, but he declined to be specific because the case is pending.

At the time she was found, Morrisette was still fully clothed. Werle, one of two Florida officers who traveled to New Britain this week to follow up on Mitchell’s arrest, said because the victim was still clothed and the water, in December, was fairly cold, DNA evidence was preserved.

"We were able to get DNA from semen taken from the victim’s body," he said. Werle and another detective, Timothy Burres, inherited the case from Lt. Mary Fagan, who originally worked on the case. Over time, said Werle, the case went cold.

"All leads were exhausted," he said. But he picked it up and continued to submit evidence to the Florida Law Enforcement Lab and, in December 2005, the lab was able to put together a full DNA profile of the suspect in the case.

Both detectives then began to work on background and on putting together an arrest warrant for Mitchell. They determined that he had lived in the area where Morrisette was found at the time of her murder while working on construction jobs.

Mitchell was reportedly born in a rural area of North Carolina called Pink Hill. He moved to Connecticut about five years ago, and once he was released from prison in 2004 for the sex offense conviction, he moved to New Britain. He continued to work in the construction trade, but it was unclear if he was self-employed or worked for a construction company.

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