RALEIGH -- It took investigators more than four months to obtain a sample of DNA that police say connects Drew Planten with the May 2002 killing of Stephanie Bennett.

Planten, 35, had declined to give detectives a DNA sample during an interview May 31, according to a search warrant released Thursday. Investigators obtained the genetic material Oct. 17, when officers swabbed Planten's gloves and work area at the N.C. Department of Agriculture laboratory where he worked.

Two days later, on Oct. 19, police arrested Planten and charged him with murder in the death of Bennett, a 23-year-old woman who was sexually assaulted and strangled in her apartment on Lake Lynn Drive in North Raleigh.

In five search warrants made public Thursday, detectives detailed what led them to Planten three years after Bennett's slaying. Officers said they wanted to search Planten's home and car to look for items that may have been stolen from Bennett's apartment, such as a JVC stereo and Bennett's underpants.

Wake Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Donald W. Stephens ordered the search warrants unsealed Wednesday. But Stephens also said that the search warrants' inventories, a list of what was seized from Planten's apartment and car, would remain sealed until next week.

The search warrants outlined the police investigation into Planten as follows:

After Bennett died, several neighbors told police about a peeping Tom, a tall man who wore a hooded sweat shirt and was seen near Bridgeport Apartments, where she lived. One neighbor told police he had seen the man crouched near Bennett's apartment in February and March of 2002.

This past February, when police again interviewed witnesses, the neighbor told detectives he had seen the peeping Tom walking a large dog, similar to a Rottweiler. The neighbor saw the peeping Tom enter woods and walk toward Dominion Apartments, a complex less than a two-minute walk from where Bennett lived.

Managers at Dominion Apartments worked with police and identified Planten as someone who had a large dog, a Rottweiler, and lived in the complex when Bennett was killed.

In May, detectives went to Planten's new apartment on Buck Jones Road and spoke briefly with him, but Planten refused to give a DNA sample.

More than four months later, on Oct. 17, police swooped into the Reedy Creek Road laboratory where Planten worked. A supervisor with the Department of Agriculture told police they could search Planten's work space, where he analyzed fertilizer ingredients as a chemistry technician.

After his arrest, officers searched Planten's rust-covered 1976 Chevy and his Buck Jones Road apartment, where they found a computer and several CDs.

Officers then obtained a search warrant to inspect computer records from the Department of Agriculture. Investigators wanted to search Planten's hard drive at work after computer logs indicated that the numerical address for a Department of Agriculture computer had appeared on a log of visitors to a memorial Web site to Bennett, www.stephaniebennett.com, which is maintained by a Raleigh police computer.