Man gets 25 years in prison for 2001 Bronx cold case rape
More than 20 years later, the case was reexamined using Investigative Genetic Genealogy. The process used DNA from the original rape kits to link investigators to genetic relatives and help identify Jancys Santiago. He was found living in Florida and arrested in November 2023. He was found guilty of first-degree rape in June.
More Stories
A man convicted of raping a college student inside her apartment nearly 25 years ago was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Friday.
Jancys Santiago was found guilty of the offense in June. This is New York's first sexual assault cold case with an indictment based on investigative genealogy.
Katy Vicchitto lived more than 20 years without knowing who attacked her on Dec. 13, 2001.
That night, according to details in the trial, a man broke into her Bronx apartment while she was asleep. He threatened her, covered her face, bound her wrists and ankles with wire hangers and then raped her. She was a 21-year-old college student at the time.
"I can't think of a day when what happened to me hasn't crossed my mind at least once," Vicchitto told the court on Friday.
More than 20 years later, the case was reexamined using Investigative Genetic Genealogy. The process used DNA from the original rape kits to link investigators to genetic relatives and help identify Jancys Santiago. He was found living in Florida and arrested in November 2023. He was found guilty of first-degree rape in June.
Vicchitto begged the judge for a maximum sentence on Friday.
"I ask the court to consider the impact of 25 years of living with the effects of this trauma, Vicchitto said, "knowing that the perpetrator was living for 25 years free and without consequences for brutally invading our lives."
Santiago was sentenced to 25 years in prison and five years of post-release supervision, consecutively to the 20 years he is already serving after being convicted in December in a Manhattan rape case from 2000. He must also register as a sex offender.
The Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said it was a 2022 federal grant that helped put technology toward solving cold cases.
"Twenty-five years ago it wasn't possible," D.A. Clark said, "and it is today, and it's reliable."
This is New York's first sexual assault cold case with an indictment based on Investigative Genetic Genealogy. The District Attorney says it won't be the last.
Earlier Friday, there were developments in a Brooklyn cold case rape using Investigative Genetic Genealogy. According to the NYPD, 55-year-old William Stephans was arrested in connection with a 1995 gunpoint robbery in Brooklyn where he allegedly forced a woman to the roof, stole her jewelry and raped her.
He was walked out of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit in the Bronx in handcuffs Friday morning. Williams faces four counts of rape.
