Source: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/nj/20070717_N_J__man_accused_of_sex_crimes.html
By Rita Giordano
Inquirer Staff Writer
A fingerprint left at the scene of an attempted sexual assault in Massachusetts and some dogged police work led to the arrest of a Delran man who Burlington County authorities allege raped a Moorestown woman in her home in 2005 and tried to assault another woman two days later.
Marcelo G. Mota, 28, of Tenby Chase Drive in Delran, was apprehended Friday night as he left a restaurant on Haddonfield Road in Cherry Hill. He was charged on a fugitive warrant from Massachusetts in connection with an investigation there into sexual attacks in 2003.
The warrant involved an August 2003 home invasion in Hopkinton, Mass., during which the victim was sexually assaulted, according to Massachusetts authorities. They said they planned to file charges against Mota in connection with two rapes earlier the same month in Westborough, Mass.
Mota's New Jersey charges include aggravated sexual assault and two counts of burglary.
"This was a very brazen attack in all cases," said Burlington County Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi.
Bernardi alleged that Mota had told his victims that he was armed. In some cases, Bernardi said, he threatened them with weapons or with hurting members of their family. In one case, the victim's three teenagers were home at the time of the attack.
Mota was held yesterday on $1 million bail. During a court hearing, Assistant Prosecutor Kevin Morgan said Mota had confessed to the Moorestown crimes. Massachusetts authorities said he also admitted to the assaults there. Mota previously lived in Framingham.
During a news conference yesterday, Bernardi described Mota as a Brazilian national living here illegally and who worked in Delran as a translator for a tax agency. While leaving the restaurant at the time of his arrest, he was with a woman on a date, Bernardi said. The prosecutor declined to name the restaurant or Mota's employer.
Mota's arrest was the result of interstate police cooperation, scientific evidence, various databases and old-fashioned police work.
Bernardi said that in January 2006, investigators learned that DNA evidence collected in the Moorestown rape case matched those taken from the two 2003 sexual assaults in Westborough. All three samples had been submitted to a national DNA database index used by law enforcement. Neither jurisdiction had been able to attach a name to the samples, and they began to work with each other.
Locally, investigators began combing through Burlington County traffic-stop records from 1999 to 2007, looking for people with Massachusetts license plates. When Mota's name came up in connection with a routine 2005 traffic stop in Delanco, they checked his criminal record and found a domestic-violence arrest. Bernardi said that arrest involved his now-estranged wife, who lives in California.
The arrest record gave investigators Mota's fingerprints, which were checked against a fingerprint found at the scene of one of the Massachusetts cases - an attempted sexual assault in Hopkinton.
Last Thursday, Burlington County investigators learned of the fingerprint match. Bernardi said Mota was put under surveillance while the fugitive warrant was prepared. He was taken into custody without incident about 11:15 p.m. Friday.
Bernardi said he believed that DNA tests would confirm Mota's involvement in the Moorestown rape. He did not rule out further charges.
"We're going to be reviewing all our open cases," Bernardi said.
Mota was known to have lived in Massachusetts and Delran, but authorities are not certain where else he may have circulated. At the time of his arrest, Bernardi said, he had a Washington state driver's license.
Gerry Leone, the district attorney in Middlesex, Mass., said in a statement that the charges indicate that, with scientific advances, "people who commit serious violent crimes may try to run, but eventually we will catch up with them and hold them accountable to the greatest extent of the law."
Contact staff writer Rita Giordano at 856-779-3841 or rgiordano@phillynews.com.
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