Life in prison in 1996 rape-murder of Kensington teen
More than 19 years after the body of a Kensington teenager was found in an abandoned house, the man DNA evidence fingered as her killer was sentenced to life in prison without parole Thursday by a Philadelphia judge.
More than 19 years after the body of a Kensington teenager was found in an abandoned house, the man DNA evidence fingered as her killer was sentenced to life in prison without parole Thursday by a Philadelphia judge.
Rafael Crespo said nothing before Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart imposed the mandatory life term for first-degree murder, and tacked on 15 to 30 years more for the sexual-assault charges involving the Sept. 30, 1996, disappearance, rape, and strangling of 17-year-old Anjeanette Maldonado.
"This family had to live with this agony until 2012," Minehart told Crespo, referring to Maldonado's mother, stepfather, sister, and brother, seated in the gallery.
"Her life was just starting and you brutally murdered her and dumped - dumped her like a piece of trash - in an abandoned house," Minehart said of Maldonado, who had a reputation as a hard worker and dreamed of becoming a commercial artist.
Maldonado's younger sister, Christina Soto - 11 in 1996 - told Minehart of the pain of losing "a sister I aspired to be like."
Soto said the family moved from the neighborhood after the murder: "I remember packing up her room when we moved . . . and seeing the pain my mother felt and there was nothing I could do to change that."
Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega read aloud a victim-impact letter by Maldonado's mother, Paulette Smith, who wrote of her daughter's dreams. She said sentencing revived "the intense pain to our family which can never be alleviated."
Maldonado, who helped her mother care for her younger siblings, disappeared on her way to school at Franklin Learning Center.
On Oct. 2, 1996, her nude body - beaten, raped, and strangled - was found inside a vacant house in the 1700 block of North Hope Street.
Detectives questioned neighbors and classmates over two years, but leads went nowhere and Maldonado's slaying became one of the city's coldest cases.
Then, in April 2012, a city homicide detective got a letter from police DNA analysts that semen found in Maldonado's body matched DNA in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System. The matching DNA was Crespo's - collected several years earlier, when he was arrested in Florida for a sexual assault.
Detective John McDermott traveled to a Florida prison and Crespo confessed that he accosted Maldonado at Front and Norris Streets as she walked to school.
Crespo's statement was that he was looking for a prostitute and Maldonado offered to have sex for $20. Crespo said they had sex for about 45 minutes in the vacant house and Maldonado asked him to choke her during the act. When she became unconscious, Crespo said, he left but did not know she was dead.
After he was arrested, Crespo agreed to a nonjury trial if prosecutors would not seek the death penalty.
On Thursday, defense attorney Michael F. Giampietro told Minehart that Crespo maintains his innocence and will appeal.
Giampietro said Crespo's childhood was marked by instability: He was brought to Philadelphia from Puerto Rico between ages 7 and 9, and was sexually molested by his mother's boyfriend. He used drugs and twice attempted suicide.
Vega argued that Crespo, 49, committed his first sex assault in Camden when he was 22, culminating with his Florida arrest for molesting two stepdaughters.
"He's just escalated his abuse and violence toward women," Vega said.
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