A Staten Island man who raped and robbed a college professor nearly 14 years ago, holding a piece of broken glass to her neck, pleaded guilty to the heinous crime on Tuesday, after being busted by DNA from a cigarette he discarded near the scene of another sexual assault.
Lerio Guerrero, 34, tossed a cigarette butt near the scene of a 2011 sexual assault in Brooklyn. While he was never charged in that rape, police arrested him for trespassing and matched his DNA to the cigarette.
A search of the state DNA database came up with a hit from the rape on Orchard St. on a chilly November night back in 1998.
A masked Guerrero pushed a 28-year-old professor as she stepped into her apartment building, then raped and sodomized her.
Not satisfied with just brutalizing her and taking what was left in her wallet, the sicko dragged her to an ATM to steal her money.
“He held a piece of broken glass against her neck. He said there was not enough money in her wallet,” said Assistant District Attorney Martha Bashford. The prosecutor said he made her call her credit card company to allow him to steal more money out of her account.
He robbed her of $800, but as he forced her to a second ATM, the victim was able to break free and get help.
Without having the name of a suspect, in 2005 prosecutors indicted just the DNA extracted from the blood he left behind on the victim’s coat when he cut his hand on the jagged piece of glass.
Guerrero, 34, evaded capture for the next decade and a half — despite bumping up against the law on a handful of misdemeanor offenses and a drunk driving conviction — before being busted by the DNA database.
James Palumbo, his lawyer, said that Guerrero struggled with alcoholism, but was attending classes at the College of Staten Island and trying to turn his life around when he was arrested.
“He had a difficult childhood,” said Palumbo. “He was pulling himself together for the first time.”
In exchange for pleading guilty to rape, sodomy, robbery and burglary, Guerrero agreed to do 15 years behind bars instead of the 25 maximum he was facing.
