FLORIDA MAN SENTENCED TO 25 YEARS IN PRISON FOR RAPING A WOMAN IN HER APARTMENT IN 2001

First Case to be Indicted in New York State Using Investigative Genetic Genealogy 

Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark today announced that a Florida man was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of first-degree Rape for sexually assaulting a college student inside her Bronx apartment in December of 2001. 

District Attorney Clark said, “This defendant committed a heinous crime. He then went about his life for 22 years while the victim endured the physical and emotional trauma of the assault. But thanks to investigators who did not give up and advancements in forensic science, the case was ultimately solved. I hope the decades this defendant will spend in prison will offer some comfort to the victim.” 

District Attorney Clark said the defendant, Jancys Santiago, 51, of Groveland, Florida was sentenced today to 25 years in prison and 5 years post-release supervision by Bronx Supreme Court Justice Laurence Busching. He must register as a sex offender. A Final Order of Protection was issued. On June 24, 2026, the defendant was convicted by a jury of first-degree Rape. Santiago is the first person to be convicted by a jury in New York State because of the use of Investigative Genetic Genealogy. 

The trial lasted six weeks, during which more than 30 witnesses were called to testify. According to the facts brought out at trial, on December 13, 2001, Santiago broke into the apartment of the 21-year-old victim while she was asleep. He threatened her, covered her face, bound her wrists and ankles with wire hangers and then raped her. Investigators matched semen recovered from the victim to DNA recovered from an unsolved rape in Manhattan from 2000. 

In 2023, a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance to the Bronx District Attorney’s Office to solve cold cases was used to fund Investigative Genetic Genealogy. This entails taking crime scene evidence and sending it to a private laboratory to develop a profile which is used to search consumer DNA databases for genetic relatives who consented to assist law enforcement. Using the suspect’s DNA recovered from the rape kits, a family tree was developed by NYPD’s Forensic Laboratory, and those results helped identify the defendant as Jancys Santiago. 

Santiago was arrested in November of 2023. On September 30, 2025, Santiago was convicted in Manhattan following a bench trial on charges of first-degree Rape and first-degree Burglary. On December 10, 2025, Santiago was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The 25-year sentence imposed today by Judge Busching in the Bronx conviction will run consecutively to the Manhattan sentence.

District Attorney Clark also thanked criminalist Kecia Harris of the Office of the City Medical Examiner for her work in the case.