Add The New York Post on Google A serial rapist was handed down the maximum prison sentence Friday for a 2001 Bronx attack cracked through a new DNA matching method — marking the first time New York used family trees to solve cold-case rapes.
Judge Laurence Busching ordered Jancys Santiago, 50, to serve the 25 years consecutively with a 20-year sentence he is already serving for a separate 2000 Manhattan home invasion rape.
A Bronx jury found Santiago guilty of first-degree rape in June, after he bound and sexually assaulted Katy Vicchitto, then a 21-year-old college senior, inside her Bronx apartment in December 2001 before fleeing to Florida where he started a family.
In a gut wrenching impact testimony, Vicchitto, now a married third grade teacher and mother of three, described the lifelong toll of the attack.
“I can’t think of a day when what happened to me hasn’t crossed my mind at least once,” Vicchitto said, urging the judge to show no leniency to Santiago who had lived upstairs in her building.
“My experience as a survivor of sexual assault affects every aspect of my life. It is like a filter that every new physical and social experience goes through.”
Assistant District Attorney Gabrielle Martin-Klein blasted Santiago for “escaping justice” in Florida, telling the court, “He gave her a life sentence of fear.”
In a chillingly similar attack 19 months before the Bronx attack, Santiago ambushed a 27-year-old woman inside her Midtown apartment after hiding in her closet, threatening to kill her, tying her limbs with wire coat hangers and then raping her.
The cases sat cold for more than two decades until the NYPD and prosecutors got a Department of Justice grant to use investigative genetic genealogy.
Forensic experts uploaded DNA from the crime scenes to an opt-in ancestry website — the kind people use to search for relatives and map their family histories — and found users who appeared to be distant relatives of the attacker.
Detectives then gathered a water bottle Santiago had discarded and tested the DNA on it, which matched evidence from both rapes.
Busching praised Vicchitto’s resilience before handing down the sentence, along with a permanent order of protection and a sex offender registration order.
Defense attorney Michael Croce maintained his client was innocent and vowed to appeal, arguing the prosecution relied entirely on science without eyewitness testimony.
“It was a DNA case,” Croce said. “I am also troubled by the fact that there have been scientific tests in the past that have led us down a path, which may not be as reliable as we once believed.”
