Phila. judge finds man guilty in 1996 rape-murder

Paulette Smith recalled that Philadelphia homicide detectives asked her to be patient, that finding who raped and killed her 17-year-old daughter would take time.

"I thought he meant a week or so," said Smith.

It wound up taking almost 19 years, but Smith was there Thursday when a Philadelphia judge found Rafael Crespo guilty of first-degree murder and sexual-assault charges in the Sept. 30, 1996, disappearance and slaying of Anjeanette Maldonado.

Smith thanked "the police, detectives, the district attorney. There was no way this was going to get solved without them constantly working on it."

Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart ordered a presentence and mental-health evaluation for the 49-year-old Crespo and set a formal sentencing hearing on Oct. 27.

Although Pennsylvania law carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole, the hearing will give the victim's family and friends the chance to make a public statement about the impact of her death.

Crespo agreed to a nonjury trial if the District Attorney's Office did not seek the death penalty.

For Philadelphia homicide detectives, the Maldonado murder was one of their coldest cases.

The Kensington teen, an aspiring commercial artist, 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, and one, James Moses, implicated a former boyfriend of Maldonado's, Christian Vrabec, saying Vrabec had admitted the killing to him.

But Moses' story could not be corroborated and when detectives went back to him, he refused to say anything more.

Vrabec testified Thursday, denying any involvement in Maldonado's disappearance and murder as well as neighborhood reports that he had previously beaten Maldonado or that he ever told Moses he killed his former high school classmate.

The break in the case came in April 2012, when homicide Detective John McDermott received a letter from police DNA analysts indicating that the semen found in Maldonado's body had matched DNA in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. The matching DNA was Crespo's - collected several years earlier when he was arrested in Florida for sexually assaulting a young girl.

The following month, McDermott traveled to a Florida prison to question Crespo and he confessed to accosting Maldonado at Front and Norris Streets as she walked to school.

Crespo's statement says he was looking for a prostitute and Maldonado offered to have sex for $20. Crespo said they had sex in the vacant house and Maldonado asked him to choke her during sex. When she became unconscious, Crespo's statement reads, he left, not knowing she was dead.

Defense attorney Michael F. Giampietro argued that the evidence proved only that Crespo had sex with Maldonado, not that he killed her. And he said Moses' statement, and other reports about Vrabec's odd behavior around the time of her disappearance, created a reasonable doubt that someone other than Crespo was the killer.

Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega said Maldonado's injuries - skull fractures, bruises, scrapes - proved she struggled before she died, and he condemned Crespo for calling the victim a prostitute.

"He says that she was a prostitute: yes, a prostitute in a school uniform with a book bag and school ID," Vega said.