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Only time will tell.

It's a phrase wound around Jesus Cordova's left arm, tattooed among images of female bodies.

It's a phrase Albuquerque police detectives held onto as they waited for a break in the case of a 20-year-old waitress randomly snatched off a University Area street in August and brutally raped in a dirty, soggy alley.

Time has told, police say.

Traces of DNA evidence found on the victim - despite her attacker's attempt to wash her in a puddle - were linked to Cordova's DNA profile in the national Combined DNA Index System database Monday, according to court documents.

Detective Jake Jacobson, with APD's Sex Crimes Unit, had been waiting for the news since he'd asked the department's crime lab to rush the DNA samples taken from the victim Aug. 4.

While the samples sat in line for testing, Jacobson had to close the case because he had no further leads.

The victim hadn't seen much of her attacker's face and there were no witnesses.

The assault happened in an alley just a three-block walk south of the restaurant where the victim worked at Cornell Drive and Central Avenue Southeast.

The victim was approached by a man asking if she'd seen a red car, according to a Metro Court criminal complaint.

He then held a knife to her throat, dragged her to an alley and forced her to pull her shirt above her head so she couldn't see his face.

After his attack, he took her phone, rummaged through her purse and tried to wash her off because, he told her, "he could be identified," according to the complaint.

With the DNA link police say they have, they now believe the attacker, whom they name as Cordova, 22, was likely referring to a 2002 arrest when he was 17 years old.

That arrest was on charges of aggravated assault, according to the department's crime lab. Further details of the incident were not available.

"He appears to be a multiple offender of violent crimes," police spokesman John Walsh said. "If it weren't for the modern miracle of DNA evidence, there wouldn't have been a break in this case."

Walsh said Jacobson looked into the possibility that Cordova was a serial rapist, checking with open rape cases at local jurisdictions.

Walsh said the query was routine in a case like this. No other DNA profiles currently in the database match Cordova's profile, he said.

But that is not to say that Cordova has no other criminal cases on his record.

The rape charges brought against him Monday were served at the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he has been held since November on three felony warrants with bonds totaling $180,000:

• A $75,000 cash-only bond was ordered in an August case reported shortly after the rape accusation. The bond was raised after Cordova twice posted bail and failed to appear for court hearings, according to court documents.

Police say several young men in a van terrorized a woman and her 6-year-old son driving next to them, at one point hitting the woman's car with a hammer and later T-boning it and pushing it down the road about 100 feet near Central Avenue at Rio Grande Boulevard mid-day on a Monday.

Police caught two men running from the scene, later identifying them as Cordova and an accomplice.

• A $50,000 cash-only band was ordered in a 2006 case charging Cordova with aggravated burglary, child abuse, bribery and intimidation of witnesses and other counts.

Cordova failed to appear for multiple court hearings for this August 2006 case. He even failed to show up the day of trial.

Further information about the allegations in this case were not available Wednesday.

• A $55,000 cash-only bond was ordered for a March 2006 case in which a mother alleges Cordova pointed a gun at her and threatened to sexually assault her while she was holding her child, according to a Metro Court criminal complaint.

The woman took her child and sister to watch movies with a woman she'd recently met, the documents say.

While at the woman's apartment, she was using the phone in a back bedroom when Cordova came into the room and pointed a gun at her and her child. The child was forced to leave the room while the woman was threatened with sexual assault, according to the complaint.

The woman's sister then broke into the room. The sisters and the child fled the home.

The woman's new acquaintance told police that Cordova, her boyfriend of a week, had beaten her several times and was a "bold individual and did not care about what others thought."

Cordova's mother, contacted by phone Wednesday, said her son is a "good boy."

"He doesn't have any warrants," his mother, Carmen Cordova said. "He has been in trouble, but he wouldn't do what they are saying. That is lies."

She said she did not know of the rape charges brought against her son.

"I rebuke it in the name of Jesus," she said.