Florida man charged with 1996 rape, murder of teen

The smiling face on the T-shirts is Anjeanette Maldonado, frozen in time at 17, with adulthood and her dream of being a commercial artist on the horizon.

"Forever young but never forgotten," reads the legend on the shirts worn by her mother, Paulette Smith, and other relatives. They were in a Philadelphia courtroom Tuesday as a Florida man was ordered to stand trial in Maldonado's 1996 death.

As Smith testified, she sat about 20 feet from the man police say raped and strangled her daughter and left her bludgeoned body in an abandoned rowhouse.

Rafael Crespo, 46, was ordered to stand trial in the murder case by Municipal Court Judge Patrick F. Dugan. Crespo was serving time in a Florida prison for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old when a DNA match tied him to evidence found on Maldonado's body.

John McDermott, a Philadelphia police detective assigned to a squad that reexamines cold cases, testified that last year he took another look at the Maldonado murder.

McDermott, now an agent with the state Attorney General's Office, said he asked the FBI to check DNA from sperm in Maldonado's body with samples in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).

Crespo's DNA, added to CODIS in the Florida case, was a match. Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega said that statistically, Crespo's DNA would match one in 38 trillion Hispanic males.

McDermott also read aloud a statement Crespo gave him in a May 30, 2012, interview in prison in Hardee County, Fla.

According to Crespo's statement, he accosted Maldonado at Front and Norris Streets as she walked to school on Sept. 30, 1996.

Crespo said he had argued with his wife and spent the night drinking and was looking for a prostitute. He claimed Maldonado offered to have sex with him for $20.

Crespo said they had sex for about 45 minutes in an abandoned house in the 1700 block of North Hope Street. At one point, Crespo allegedly told McDermott, the girl asked him to choke her during sex. When she fell unconscious on the floor, Crespo's statement continues, he left her there but insisted he did not know she was dead.

Vega described the results of Maldonado's autopsy, which he said showed she died of strangulation, but had also been struck in the face, dragged around the floor and hit in the head at least twice with a blunt object, possibly a hammer, that cracked her skull.

McDermott said Crespo, who was visiting relatives in the city, said he never told anyone about Maldonado: "I never thought it would come up."

McDermott said Crespo also insisted he always wore a condom with prostitutes but did not have one when he met Maldonado.

"I wish I had a condom now since my DNA came up, that's for sure," added Crespo in his statement.