A man who detectives say sexually assaulted a woman at gunpoint after breaking into her home in Pompano Beach 16 years ago has been arrested based on new testing of DNA evidence from the attack, the Broward Sherriff’s Office announced Monday.
Wisler Marcellus, 63, was arrested on Oct. 28 and is being held in the Broward Main Jail on charges of sexual battery with a weapon and armed burglary stemming from the June 19, 2009, attack.
A man wearing a mask and gloves broke in through a window into a 36-year-old woman’s home in the 600 block of Northwest Ninth Avenue about 3:30 a.m. while she and her two infant children slept in the master bedroom together, the Sheriff’s Office said Monday in a news release announcing the arrest. She awoke to the man holding her at gunpoint. The children slept through the attack, and the man ran away through her front door, taking her purse with him.
Detectives collected the man’s semen after the sexual assault but could not identify a suspect with the resources available in 2009, Detective Andrew Gianino said in a video statement. The Sheriff’s Office reworked the case after receiving grant funding dedicated for cold cases, he said.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement maintains a DNA database with samples from offenders arrested for or convicted of certain crimes, including murder and sexual assault, and the DNA within the database is used to compare with DNA evidence in unresolved cases.
Earlier this year, FDLE searched its database in order to compare the DNA evidence from the attack, turning up a match for a close relative of the suspect, the Sheriff’s Office said.
The relative they found was Marcellus’s son, Gianino said in the video. BSO Crime Analyst Maritza Nuñez dove into the son’s background in order to create a family tree. In the video statement, Nuñez said it was at first a challenge to find Marcellus’s name; it was missing from his son’s birth certificate.
In October, investigators learned Marcellus had gone to Haiti but was scheduled to return later that month. They stopped him at Miami International Airport on Oct. 20 and carried out a DNA search warrant. BSO’s Crime Lab determined the DNA swabs collected from Marcellus at the airport matched with the evidence collected from the woman after the attack, the news release said.
Less than a year after the attack, Marcellus had been arrested by BSO deputies on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest without violence, which were dropped. In 2012, deputies arrested him on a misdemeanor domestic violence battery charge, county court records show, which was also dropped.