By Forum Staff
DNA lifted from a fork discarded 1,200 miles away from the scene of a svage 2009 Ridgewood murder has led to the arrest of the nephew of the victim, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced on Thursday.
Katz noted that Anthony Scalici, 41, of Boynton Beach, has been indicted by a grand jury on a charge of second-degree murder in the stabbing death of his 64-year-old uncle, Rosario Prestigiacomo, inside the victim’s Greene Avenue residence.
According to Katz, the 15-year-old cold case was solved through forensic genetic genealogy, making it the first time a homicide suspect was identified and arrested in New York City making use of public genealogy databases.
According to the charges:
On Feb. 10, 2009, at approximately 2:15 p.m., police were called to Prestigiacomo’s home at 20-31 Greene Ave. after a neighbor reported hearing a disturbance.
A responding officer gained access to the home through a first-floor window and saw the victim laying face down in a pool of blood in a hallway. Blood was also visible on the walls.
Prestigiacomo had been stabbed 16 times in the face, neck, torso and extremities and suffered puncture wounds from a knife to his lung, esophagus, chest and lower abdomen. He also had blunt force injuries to his head, torso and extremities.
NYPD crime scene detectives collected several blood swabs from the location. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner examined the swabs and was able to determine not only a DNA profile that matched the victim, but also an additional unknown male DNA profile, suggesting that the attacker had been injured and was bleeding. That profile was entered into local, state, and national databases with negative results.
In March 2022, the DA’s Office and the NYPD Cold Case Squad sought the assistance of a private laboratory and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help generate leads to the unknown suspect’s identity by using forensic genetic genealogy.
In June 2022, the laboratory, Othram Inc., used advanced DNA testing to produce a comprehensive genealogical profile from the suspect’s blood left at the scene. The genealogical profile was then uploaded to public databases.
Linda Doyle, of the NYPD’s Forensic Investigations Division, built a family tree to identify possible suspects, or relatives of a suspect, using information from the databases. In December 2023, Doyle turned over an investigative lead to the Queens District Attorney’s Office and the NYPD Cold Case Squad. The District Attorney’s Office, alongside NYPD’s Cold Case Squad, then conducted an extensive investigation which ultimately resulted in the identification of Scalici.
On various dates in January and February, detectives from the NYPD Cold Case Squad and Boynton Beach Police Department conducted surveillance on Scalici and attempted to obtain a discarded DNA sample from him. On Feb. 17, 2024, Boynton Beach Detectives Marco Villari and Aramis Grigorian successfully obtained a fork used by the defendant.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner analyzed the fork under the supervision of Lisa Mertz, the assistant director of Cold Case, and was able to produce a DNA profile. DNA testing confirmed that the profile matched the unknown male DNA profile developed from blood evidence left at the scene by the suspect and matched DNA recovered from under the victim’s fingernail.
Scalici is the son of the victim’s ex-wife’s brother. As of Wednesday afternoon, motive had yet to be determined.
If convicted, Scalici faces up to 25 years to life in prison.
