Police have name in seven-year-old killing of child
A DNA database helped police identify the man they seek in the slaying of Iriana DeJesus in Hunting Park.
In the summer of 2000, after 5-year-old Iriana DeJesus was abducted and killed in Hunting Park, Philadelphia police zeroed in on a baby-faced Honduran drifter they knew only as Carlos.
They even issued an arrest warrant for a Carlos Doe.
Yesterday, thanks to a DNA database, homicide investigators identified Carlos by his real name.
They said that he is Alexis Flores, 24, but that they do not know where he has been since he was deported to Honduras in June 2005.
Capt. Michael Costello, the homicide squad commander, said the break in the case dates to November 2004, when Flores was arrested in Phoenix on a felony forgery charge.
Arizona, Costello said, requires felony suspects to provide a DNA sample.
In late February, Pennsylvania state police matched DNA evidence from the Hunting Park crime scene with the Arizona sample, giving Philadelphia investigators their first major break in nearly seven years.
An arrest warrant has been issued in Flores' name, and the FBI has joined the hunt under a federal warrant charging him with unlawful flight.
Costello said that while Flores had not been seen since he was deported almost two years ago because he was in the country illegally, he might have returned to the United States, possibly to the Philadelphia area.
Iriana's mother and sister moved to Louisiana after the killing; efforts to reach them yesterday were unsuccessful. Costello said the girl's family was happy police had not given up.
For Detective Joseph Bamberski, the lead investigator on the case, the break renewed hope that the killer would be caught.
"It's been a long time coming," Bamberski said. "This is the one case that always bothered me. . . . It always was in the back of my mind: Where was he? What was he doing? Has he done this again?"
Iriana, who lived on Fairhill Street near Luzerne Avenue, was last seen about 10 p.m. July 29 walking hand-in-hand with a man a few blocks away on Pike Street near Sixth Street.
Her body was found Aug. 3 in a tub under a pile of a wallpaper and a plastic bag in a storage room of a contractor's office on Sixth near Pike.
The man everyone knew then as Carlos had been working only a few days for the contractor and had keys to the building. He, too, disappeared July 29.