A former Middlesex Township man, who on Monday was convicted of sexually assaulting an Allegheny County woman in 2002, plans to fight a different assault allegation here.

But the alleged victim in the Butler County case already has appeared on the witness stand, testifying about her experience during the Allegheny County trial, an official said.

Both cases occurred in 2002.

“The two cases are very similar,” Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Janet Necessary said of her witness decisions. “And the two incidents were exactly seven weeks apart. The one here was July 25. The one in Butler County was June 6.”

In the Allegheny County case defendant Ralph S. Skundrich, 47, broke into the third-floor Shadyside Apartment of an 18-year-old college student. During the 2:30 a.m. break-in, Skundrich threatened her with a gun, demanded money from her and then forced her to have sex.

Skundrich was found guilty of five counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, as well as two counts of sexual assault, and one count each of indecent assault, terroristic threats, burglary, simple assault and false imprisonment.

He will be sentenced April 8 by Allegheny County Judge David R. Cashman.

“Because the assailant (in the Allegheny County case) was masked entirely in black, this never would never have been solved if not for DNA evidence,” Necessary said.

Skundrich was identified as a suspect in both cases after a DNA match was made in the national database in 2009.

A DNA expert at the Allegheny County trial said that the probability of the sample collected from the victim coming from Skundrich was 4.04 quadrillion times more likely than coincidence, Necessary said.

DNA also is crucial evidence in the Butler County case.

Here, a Cranberry Township woman has alleged a man wearing a rubber mask who claimed he had a knife raped her after breaking into her Laurelwood Apartment complex home. After the alleged 2 a.m. assault, the man threatened to kill the woman and her young child if she called the police.

“The prosecution has no physical evidence other than DNA,” said defense attorney J.W. Hernandez Cuebas, who represents Skundrich in the Butler County case. “We plan to take this to a trial.”

Cuebas, who said he plans to raise issues with the DNA finding, offered a few other tidbits of his client’s defense.

“The victim gave a physical description of her attacker that does not fit with my client. And they found a footprint size 12 at the scene. My client has maybe a size 8 foot. Very small.”

A trial is scheduled in Butler County for Feb. 24, but court officials have said it will be postponed.

Cuebas said he would fight to have any evidence of the Allegheny County case from being presented during the Butler County trial. He described the two cases as “very different. The one in Pittsburgh was more of a home invasion, burglary accusation.”

Butler County Assistant District Attorney Patricia McLean, who is prosecuting the Butler County case, could not be reached for comment.

Skundrich, who originally lived in Middlesex Township, has a criminal history that includes crimes related to drugs, weapons and theft.

In 2005, Skundrich disappeared when he was to be sentenced in Butler County on charges of receiving stolen property, two weapons violations, and drug and paraphernalia possession. He allegedly cut off an ankle bracelet monitoring device, and skipped out on a $250,000 bail.

Four years later, he was arrested in Pompano Beach, Fla., after a segment about him appeared on “America’s Most Wanted” television show.

When he was retuned and sentenced here, officials reportedly matched his DNA to the sexual assault cases.

Court records say Skundrich still has unrelated charges pending in Florida and in Westmoreland County.