Rodolfo Vasquez jailed after DNA connects him to 25-year-old home invasion, rape
On January 11, New Jersey’s Burlington County Prosecutor, LaChia L. Bradshaw, announced that 63-year-old Rodolfo Vasquez of Pennsauken has been sentenced to eight years in New Jersey state prison, thanks to DNA testing and better information-sharing policies between law enforcement agencies that connected him to a Mount Laurel home invasion and sexual assault that went down 25 years ago.
Vasquez was sentenced in December 2022, according to CBS News. Under an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office, Vasquez pled guilty in June 2022 to Aggravated Sexual Assault in the First Degree and must serve 85 percent of his eight-year sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
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According to his court testimony when he entered his plea, Vasquez said that, back in June 1997, he went into a home on Camber Lane in Mount Laurel “without authorization and sexually assaulted a woman who was there by herself.” The female victim tried to defend herself but was struck by Vasquez multiple times, resulting in permanent vision damage in one eye. The victim’s name is being withheld.
The original investigation began in June 1997, when officers from the Mount Laurel Police Department met with the victim, who said that the assault occurred after she heard a noise and got out of bed to check on it. A male subject confronted her in the bedroom doorway, she told police.
The intruder grabbed her and began striking her in the head, she said. He sexually assaulted her and told her not to call the police, then fled the residence. The assault occurred in the dark, and the victim was unable to provide a detailed description of the attacker.
While on the scene, responding officers discovered that a rear sliding glass door had been forced open. They recovered evidence at the scene, and the victim agreed to have a sexual assault examination performed at a hospital, according to WFIN News.
The biological evidence was submitted to the New Jersey State Police crime laboratory, which generated a DNA profile, but failed to identify a suspect when entered into a national DNA database.
In August 2020, the Mount Laurel Police Department was notified that the DNA profile from the 1997 case had been matched to Vasquez through the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which is overseen by the FBI.
Vasquez had been required to submit a DNA sample after pleading guilty to Contempt of a Judicial Order stemming from his arrest by the Cinnaminson Township Police Department for driving without a license in 2019.
During the initial rape and home invasion investigation, officers found a rear sliding glass door had been forced open. They also recovered evidence at the scene; and the victim had a sexual assault examination performed at the hospital.
A search warrant was secured and another DNA sample was collected from Vasquez which matched the one collected during the investigation in 1997.
“This case strongly demonstrates the value of the CODIS database as a law enforcement tool,” Prosecutor Bradshaw said. “I commend all of the investigators and law enforcement personnel whose thorough, diligent work held the defendant accountable after all of this time and brought justice for the victim.”
The original investigation was conducted by Mount Laurel Detective James Letchford, who retired in 2001. Mount Laurel Detective Sergeant Sean Bristow was the lead investigator when the case was reopened following the DNA match.
(Source: Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office)
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