Man Sentenced In Harlem Cold Case Murder, Prosecutors Say

HARLEM, NY — A man is facing life in prison for a murder committed more than 20 years ago in Harlem, prosecutors announced.

Rafael Antonio Perez, now 52, was sentenced to 25-years-to-life in state prison Tuesday, the Manhattan district attorney's office announced. Perez was convicted of two counts of murder in the second degree and one count of kidnapping in the first degree in January, prosecutors said.

On Dec. 7, 1997, Perez and three other men broke into an apartment on West 150th Street in search of drugs they believed were hidden there, prosecutors said. The men woke up the occupants of the apartment — a man and two women — and tied them up with wire hangers as they searched the home for drugs, prosecutors said.

When no drugs were found, Perez and his cohorts turned to torture. Perez poured acetone down the pants of 30-year-old Carmen Cecilia Maria and lit a match in an attempt to scare her, but ended up setting the woman on fire, prosecutors said. Maria died at Harlem hospital, suffering burns to nearly 100 percent of her body, prosecutors said.

The case went unsolved because the two survivors fled the country in fear, prosecutors said. One of the survivors was located in the Dominican Republic in 2008, which led investigators to identify Perez and another man, Daniel Santana, as suspects, prosecutors said.

Santana, was caught in the Dominican Republic in 2008 and convicted in 2011. Perez avoided capture for years, but was eventually tracked down in 2013 and extradited to the United States in 2014.

"For more than two decades, this case has haunted prosecutors, police, and paramedics as one of the most violent and depraved crimes they had ever encountered," District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., said in a statement. "Rafael Antonio Perez committed a torturous act of murder as he burst into a Harlem apartment, bound his victims with wire hangers, and set Carmen Maria — a young mother of three — on fire. Her injuries were so severe that she was completely unrecognizable to paramedics."

Photo by Shutterstock