In the mid-1990s, a string of violent home invasions, rapes and burglaries terrorized southeast Queens.
Some of the victims reported to the police that a man had broken into their homes and covered their heads with clothing or a sheet during the assaults. Others said they had been held at gunpoint. After raping them, the man often stole jewelry or money from their homes before fleeing into the night.
The assaults all seemed to be connected to the same person, whose fingerprints were found at some of the crime scenes. But the cases went unsolved for 30 years.
This week, a man was extradited from Georgia and charged in the attacks after new DNA testing linked him to the crimes, the Queens district attorney’s office announced on Thursday.
“After several decades, this defendant will finally face charges of violently raping at least five women, some at gunpoint, between the years 1995 and 1997,” the district attorney, Melinda Katz, said in a statement.
“Although decades have passed, these cold cases were not forgotten,” she added.
The authorities in Georgia helped connect the man, Michael Benjamin, 57, of Conyers, Ga., to the crimes by lifting DNA from a cup he had used and left behind at the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office in town. The DNA matched that taken from the victims at the time of their assaults, Queens prosecutors said on Thursday.
New testing of rape kits administered to the victims, who ranged in age from 21 to 27, uncovered the match, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
“Thanks to the bravery of the victims,” Ms. Katz said, “vital DNA evidence was gathered, which helped law enforcement identify the person responsible.”
Mr. Benjamin, who was brought to New York City on Wednesday, was indicted and arraigned on 17 counts, including first-degree rape, sodomy, sexual assault, burglary and more. He pleaded not guilty to all charges in court on Thursday. If convicted, Mr. Benjamin faces up to 25 years in prison.
Mr. Benjamin was indicted on the same charges in 2005 as a John Doe, based on fingerprints he had left at the scenes of the attacks, according to prosecutors and the law enforcement official. But he remained unidentified for years.
Mr. Benjamin has been linked to four rapes, burglaries and robberies involving five victims in the Queens neighborhoods of Jamaica, St. Albans, Laurelton and Brookville, according to prosecutors.
On July 24, 1995, prosecutors said, Mr. Benjamin entered his first victim’s home through a window while she slept. He then pulled a sheet over her head, tied her up and sexually assaulted her. Afterward, he fled the house with her cash and jewelry.
The next summer, on Aug. 24, 1996, Mr. Benjamin broke into his second victim’s home while she was sleeping and covered her head with a jacket before assaulting her, according to prosecutors.
Less than a month later, the attacks escalated.
On Sept. 16, prosecutors said, Mr. Benjamin approached his third victim near her front door. Holding a gun, the authorities said, he forced the woman into her house and threatened to kill her husband and child, who were inside, if she did not cooperate. Prosecutors said Mr. Benjamin raped the woman and left the house after taking money from her.
That winter, on Feb. 8, 1997, prosecutors said, Mr. Benjamin broke into the home of two women while brandishing a gun. He sexually assaulted both of them before fleeing with their cash and jewelry.
In court on Thursday, the judge, Gia L. Morris of Queens County Supreme Court, remanded Mr. Benjamin to the Rikers Island jail complex and ordered him back in court on Dec. 5.
Southeast Queens was plagued by a string of sexual assaults in the ’90s and early 2000s. In 2006, the police arrested Jauan Griffith, then 27, after a routine traffic stop revealed that his fingerprints matched those found at the scene of four rapes and an attempted rape in and around the Laurelton and Rosedale neighborhoods between 1995 and 2004. Mr. Griffith, the police said, had sexually assaulted the women after entering their apartments through a window in the middle of the night, often wielding a knife.
Detectives initially believed Mr. Griffith’s attacks had been committed by an 18-year-old man known as the Night Crawler, who had been accused of raping women in the mid-1990s. The man, William Talley, was charged in 1995 with three rapes and four attempted rapes in the Rosedale area over a two-month period that year. Mr. Talley, who authorities said often broke into his victims’ homes at night, knife in hand, was caught while fleeing the home of a would-be victim on his bicycle.
Taylor Robinson is a Times reporter covering the New York City metro area.
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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