Suspect Caught in Riverside Park Rape of 2005
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A suspect wanted for the rape of a homeless woman in Riverside Park and three sexual assaults in Miami was arrested today after investigators used DNA samples from the victims to track him to a psychiatric center in Queens, authorities said.
Louis Alfonzo was arrested at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in the Queens Village section of Queens after investigators spent more than a year trying to connect matching DNA recovered from the four victims.
Mr. Alfonzo is alleged to have raped and beat a 68-year-old woman in Riverside Park in August 2005. After investigators retrieved Mr. Alfonzo’s DNA from the victim, they connected him to three attacks on elderly women in Miami in 2004, authorities said.
While investigators had matched the DNA to confirm that one suspect was behind the series of assaults, it took more than two years to track down Mr. Alfonzo.
