An Arlington, Virginia, man was apprehended at his home Tuesday evening and butted in link with a string of sexual offenses that occurred in the D.C. area of Georgetown in the late 2000s, authorities stated Wednesday.
Ernesto Ramon Mercado, 54, has been charged with three counts of first-degree sexual assault and 5 counts of second-degree sexual abuse, with exacerbating conditions on all matters, after being forensically linked to 5 home intrusion rape situations that occurred in the Georgetown location between 2008 and 2012. Mercado has additionally been linked to a sixth sexual offense in College Park, Maryland, simply off the College of Maryland school.
” Thanks to DNA evidence from the rape kits of bold survivors, improvements in DNA innovation, and the steadfast initiatives of our law enforcement companions and our district attorneys, we were able to connect these 6 rapes,” U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves claimed in a press release. “Once we had a DNA profile of the suspect, the team used every forensic device at its disposal, in addition to antique investigator work, to recognize the person behind this DNA profile. That hard work brought about yesterday’s arrest of Ernesto Mercado.”
At the time of the sexual offenses, the then-unknown wrongdoer had actually been dubbed the “Georgetown-College Park Cuddler Rapist.” The five sexual offenses in D.C. happened between June 26, 2008 and Aug. 31, 2012.
” In the media records at the time, this suspect was identified as both the ‘University Park Cuddler’ and the ‘Georgetown Cuddler.’ For many years, this term has just caused more injury to our targets. This man is a predator, and his intent was not to snuggle these ladies, yet instead, his intent was to rape them, and it was just when they would awaken that the assault would finish and he would certainly flee,” claimed Det. Alexander Mac Bean, with the sexual offense chilly instance system in the Criminal Investigations Department of the Metropolitan Cops Department.
According to authorities, Mercado would get into homes in the late evening or predawn hours and assault these ladies. Many survivors reported being asleep when they were first attacked and awakening during the act, at which time the assaulter took off..
Mercado is believed to have tracked his sufferers, targeting those alone, sleeping or intoxicated, authorities stated.
The arrest was the result of the Cold Instance Sexual Assault Effort, a collaboration between D.C. authorities and the united state Lawyer’s Workplace to reinvestigate and shut previously unsolved sexual assaults.
” For the past 16 years, our Sexual offense Device investigatives have remained to act on leads and attach the instances with each other– looking for patterns, evidence and a suspect,” D.C. cops Principal Pamela Smith claimed at a news conference Wednesday. “We understand that people typically desire solutions immediately in cases, yet our detectives never ever gave up, and today’s news talks to their endless commitment to bring justice to targets.”.
Mercado appeared in court Wednesday, where the judge bought an initial hearing be scheduled for Oct. 10.
The investigation is recurring. Any individual who was sexually assaulted or who may know pertaining to these or additional cases is motivated to call the D.C. police at 202-727-9099 or text 50411. You can remain anonymous.
‘ I awakened with somebody on top of me’.
According to court documents, Mercado was associated with at the very least five offenses in the Georgetown area.
3 of the first targets explained waking up early in the morning in 2008 to discover a tall Hispanic male in their homes. Around that time, a Georgetown College representative informed the Georgetown Voice’s “Vox Populi” everyday newspaper that the Division of Public Safety and security would be enhancing patrols in those locations.
In one more situation, in June 2008, court records say a man broke into a lady’s basement apartment and tried to sexually assault her in her bed.
The lady had actually been consuming alcohol with buddies, got home around 3 a.m. and then went to sleep, court documents said. A couple of hours later on, “I awakened with a person in addition to me,” the woman told a registered nurse at the time. The man after that fled, adding the stairs from her home.
Almost a year later, in July 2009, one more female reported she had gotten up to a man in addition to her. The woman said she assumed she was dreaming and “then recognized that a person was having sex with her,” court papers claimed. The man then went out.
In a message on its website in August 2009, The Georgetown Voice’s content board said “the rapist continues to posture a threat to women’s security on school and in the bordering neighborhood.”.
In 2012, a woman in Northwest D.C. reported the screen to her bed room home window had actually been reduced and she woke up to locate her underwears feeling “damp,” after returning home from an evening out. She “vaguely remembered a person (being) in her space however can not offer a description,” the papers check out.
The lady obtained a sexual offense exam carried out in New York, and reported the occurrence to authorities when she went back to D.C
. In a follow-up meeting in 2016, the very same female recalled remaining in “a foggy dream state” at the time and had attempted to the push the man off her “then seeing him go out her door.”.
How authorities zeroed in on the Arlington male.
Evidence from the sexual offenses were become part of the CODIS data source for regular search. The database holds DNA profiles from founded guilty culprits, unresolved crime scene proof and missing out on individuals. The male DNA profiles matched each other, showing that the very same person was linked in the attacks.
A genetic genealogy testing resulted in Mercado’s recognition. Forensic family tree is a strategy in which detectives make use of a known DNA sample to construct an ancestral tree of possible connections based on DNA profiles from publicly available genealogy sites.
For the past numerous weeks, police got a warrant to obtain swabs of Mercado’s chauffeur side door manage of his automobile and the within his cheek. Checking of the cheek swabs accumulated from Mercado located that his DNA profile matched proof collected from among the previous assaults.
” As the other day’s apprehension shows, advancements in modern technology and collaboration among police companions can lead to developments in cases that have previously gone unsolved,” stated FBI representative David Geist in a statement.
WTOP’s Abigail Constantino added to this record.
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