The Queens District Attorney’s Office said that a man from Florida was charged in New York with the murder of his uncle 15 years ago after police matched the DNA on a plastic fork he threw away at the scene of the crime.
An indictment of 41-year-old Anthony Scalici by a grand jury was made public on Thursday. He was charged with second-degree murder, according to a statement from Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz.
Rosario Prestigiacomo, Scalici’s uncle, was found stabbed to death in his Queens home in 2009. The crime went unsolved until February when his DNA was matched to the knife in Florida with the help of public family databases.
The DA’s office told the New York Times that Prestigiacomo had been cut 16 times and hit with a shovel before he died.
Katz said in the news release that this is the first time that public genealogical records have been used to find and arrest a murder suspect in New York City.
“I formed a Cold Case Unit to bring closure to grieving families and seek justice on behalf of victims,” Katz said in a blog post. “This case shows how persistent and determined the investigators were in pursuit of this and all cold cases. It also shows how well my office and the NYPD Cold Case Squad worked together.” No matter how much time has passed, defendants should not be able to get away from the law.
Scalici’s lawyer told the Times that he pleaded not guilty this week.
He will be back in court on July 8.
