DNA links invasion suspect to other attacks

A suspect wanted in a recent series of Nassau home invasions has been linked by DNA to a hammer attack in Hempstead in July and the kidnapping and rape of a 2-year-old girl in Texas, police said Thursday.

A baseball cap left by the still-unidentified attacker after he fled a Great Neck home on Dec. 12 helped police make the connections. The intruder had struggled with a girl, 15, inside the home, and DNA from the cap matched genetic material collected in the two other cases, police said.

"This is a serious predator in our midst," Nassau Police Commissioner Lawrence W. Mulvey said at a news conference Thursday. "We believe this subject frequents the Great Neck area, if not lives in Great Neck."

Police describe the intruder as between 25 and 30 years old, around 5 feet, 2 inches tall and of slight build.

Nassau police said they are in contact with FBI and immigration officials as they investigate five attempted burglaries and a trespassing in Great Neck and Kings Point since Nov. 30 that they believe the man committed.

Occupants and eyewitnesses in each case ranged in age from 1 to 63. Each case was voyeuristic in nature, police said.

"It is apparent there is a sexual motivation behind his actions," said Chief Steven Skyrnecki after the news conference.

Three incidents occurred Dec. 15. In one, a man entered a bedroom of two children, ages 1 and 5, and then left. Another intrusion was reported 25 minutes later and a third about 90 minutes after that when a woman, 61, reported a man entering her room and holding a knife to her throat.

"Please help us catch this animal," Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano said during the news conference at police headquarters in Mineola.

Meanwhile, around 75 people showed up at a previously scheduled Kings Point Civic Association meeting last night, called to discuss the home invasions, community safety and ways to help police.

"I think we were just lucky that something more serious did not occur," association president Marsha Rotman said before the meeting.

Police Thursday released a video and photos of the suspect taken from security cameras at a Hempstead Home Depot, where the suspect had visited and was hired by a woman to do some plumbing work on a bathroom.

When she complained about the quality of the work, he attacked her in her home with a hammer, fracturing her skull and causing neurological damage, police said. The woman spoke Spanish and told police she believed the man was from Honduras and he had identified himself as Marvin, Mulvey said. DNA in that case came from a Sprite bottle the man left at the scene.

Nassau police said they were in touch with police in Laredo, Texas, where a border patrol officer in 2009 found a 2-year-old girl wandering the street after she had been raped. Police in Laredo said DNA from the cap provided a link, but not a concrete identity.

"At this point right now, we're both keeping each other informed," Laredo Police Department Investigator Joe E. Baeza said. "We have no inclination as to who this person is."