After 16 years, Crystal Nunez-Vargas finally heard the words she had been waiting for Monday when a judge ordered her father released after DNA evidence linked the crimes to a serial rapist on the FBI's most wanted list. Vargas was serving a term of 55 years to life in prison when he contacted the innocence project at California Western School of Law in 2012 and said he thought he was wrongly convicted of crimes that were the work of the so-called Teardrop Rapist. The notorious predator known for a tattoo of a teardrop under his eye has been linked by DNA to 11 crimes and is suspected of 35 across the Los Angeles area, the innocence project said. With advances in DNA technology, his lawyers were able in show that genetic evidence from the forcible rape was linked to the Teardrop Rapist and not Vargas.