Authorities nabbed a suspect for a two-decades-old West Village rape after his DNA profile was entered into a Florida database earlier this year and matched the victim’s rape kit, Manhattan prosecutors said.
Joseph Giardala, 44, was extradited from Los Angeles and hauled into Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday, where he pleaded not guilty to rape and robbery, among other charges.
He allegedly attacked the young woman as she left a West Village movie theater shortly after midnight on Jan. 23, 1995, prosecutors said.
“The victim, a 25-year-old woman, was accosted by a knife-wielding man who forced her into a vestibule, robbed and sexually assaulted her,” said Assistant District Attorney Melissa Mourges.
The victim ran to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where a rape kit was collected, but the case went cold, the prosecutor said.
The kit wasn’t tested until 2001, when New York City addressed its rape-kit backlog and sent out approximately 17,000 stored samples to be analyzed for DNA evidence.
A DNA profile from the victim’s rape kit was entered into the FBI’s database and the case remained cold — until April 7, when the Manhattan DA’s Office was notified of a match from a DNA profile entered into a Florida database earlier this year.
Prosecutors described Giardala as a city-hopping drifter who in one year had purchased 230 tickets on Delta Air Lines including to destinations as far-flung as Japan, Brazil and Russia.
“We do not know very much about this defendant,” the prosecutor said. He gets $900 a month in government benefits and had used his welfare card in at least two dozen cities since 2009, she added.
When Giardala was busted at Los Angeles Airport, he had more than 20 credit cards and driver’s licenses from different states, authorities said.
“If New York City had not taken the initiative to tackle its rape-kit backlog, this victim’s kit may never have been tested, and this defendant never apprehended,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. “As this case demonstrates, DNA evidence solves crimes across state lines and across decades.”