Friday, July 1, 2005
D.A. BROWN: DNA MATCH RESULTS IN IMPRISONED FLORIDA RAPIST BEING SENTENCED TO ADDITIONAL 15 YEAR PRISON TERM FOLLOWING GUILTY PLEA FOR 1997 QUEENS SEXUAL ASSAULT ON SISTERS INSIDE THEIR HOME
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced today that a convicted rapist serving a life sentence in a Florida prison for sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in 2000 has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl and sexually abusing her 10-year-old sister inside their Queens residence in 1997. The sentence is to run consecutive to his life sentence in Florida.
District Attorney Brown said, “The defendant’s identification, prosecution and conviction was a direct result of an ongoing initiative involving unsolved rape cases in which convicted felons are required to submit their DNA to state and national databanks. I hope that the young victims in this case find some comfort in knowing that their attacker will never again walk the streets of this or any other city.”
District Attorney Brown identified the defendant as Edgar Munera, 42, formerly of Woodside, Queens. The defendant pled guilty on May 25, 2005 to Sodomy in the First Degree and Sexual Abuse in the First Degree before Queens Supreme Court Justice Barry Kron who imposed today’s 15-year prison sentence which is to be served on top of a life sentence the defendant is currently serving in Florida for a sexual assault on a young girl in 2000.
District Attorney Brown said that according to the Queens County charges on July 29, 1997 about 5:00 a.m. the defendant, wearing a ski-mask, broke into the victims’ home while their parents were at work. The defendant began sexually abusing the 10-year-old girl whose screams awoke her 17-year-old sister who came to her younger sister’s aid. The defendant held a pair of scissors to the older sister’s throat, gagged both victims, sexually assaulted the older sister and fled.
The District Attorney said that the defendant fled to Florida where he was arrested in 2000 when he broke into a home and sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl. The defendant was required by law to provide a DNA sample which the national DNA databank subsequently linked to the 1997 Queens sexual attack.
Assistant District Attorney Eric C. Rosenbaum, DNA Prosecutions Unit Chief, prosecuted the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Marjory D. Fisher, Bureau Chief of the District Attorney’s Special Victims Bureau, and the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Charles A. Testagrossa and Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel A. Saunders.