CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley’s office has used burgeoning DNA technology to identify three men who are accused of carrying out a combined six sexual assaults across Cleveland in the 1990s.

Two of the men, who were indicted in recent years as John Doe defendants, have pleaded not guilty to charges including rape. The third man died in 2020, prosecutors said.

O’Malley and Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mary Weston said that they went as far as to get a search warrant to get a sample of the tissue of the man who died from the Cleveland Clinic, where he had been treated for pancreatic cancer, so they could test his DNA against that taken from one of the rape kits.

O’Malley’s office teamed up with the Texas-based genetic testing company Gene by Gene and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s Office’s forensic crime lab to use the same technique — and the same genealogist — that led to the 2018 arrest of the notorious Golden State Killer.

The process, which began with grant money from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2019 and is known as the G.O.L.D. Unit, identified the first defendant earlier this year. O’Malley and Weston hope it will help them identify dozens more.

“It’s a tremendous asset that this technology has evolved to the point that we’re able to do the things we’re doing,” O’Malley said.

Weston said she hopes the technology can bring solace to the minds of the women who were attacked. Weston said one of the…