A Bronx judge gave 25 more years of jail time to a man convicted of a second rape, this time after prosecutors, for the first time in New York State, used investigative genetic genealogy to prove to a jury that he committed the two-decades-old crime.
Jancys Santiago, 51, was already serving more than 20 years on a prior rape conviction in Manhattan. On Friday, the one question remaining in a Bronx courtroom was whether the new sentence would run concurrently or consecutively.
The judge nearly doubled his time in prison, almost guaranteeing that he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“Between the rapes, you thought about how to do it better, how to cover your face, how to not leave fingerprints and how to potentially remove any DNA,” Judge Laurence Busching said in court. “All this causes me to impose a sentence that is commensurate with the damage you caused and the risk you represent.”
Authorities eventually caught up with Santiago nearly 25 years after he sexually assaulted college student Katy Vicchitto inside her Bronx apartment on December 13, 2001, according to prosecutors.
“It seems fair that he will wake up every day with no escape from the reality of his actions,” Vicchitto said in a statement before the sentencing. “I can’t think of a day when what happened to me hasn’t crossed my mind at least once.”
“You have a chance to demand real accountability and justice for a crime that so often goes unpunished, or even unreported,” she told the judge.
Prosecutors said Santiago broke into the then 21-year-old Vicchitto’s apartment while she was asleep. He threatened her, covered her face, bound her wrists and ankles with wire hangers and then raped her.
Investigators ultimately matched semen recovered at the scene to DNA recovered from an unsolved rape in Manhattan from 2000.
But, by then, Santiago had already gone on with his life, moving to Florida and having a family of his own while Vicchitto dealt for decades with the emotional scars, officials said.
“Every time the lights go out, every time she hears a noise when she is in her own home, she is forced to relive the terror,” Bronx Assistant District Attorney Gabrielle Martin-Klein said about Vicchitto as she addressed Judge Busching. “He gave her a lifetime sentence of fear.”
“This level of premeditation requires a specific kind of malice,” she added about the defendant. “It requires a man who can sit, plan, and systematically strip another human being of her security, of her dignity, and her bodily autonomy.”
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark called the sentencing a “long-awaited day.”
“This decision is more than twenty years in the making,” she said at a press conference after the sentencing. “I am relieved that the sentence holds Santiago accountable, ensuring that he will be in prison and unable to harm other women.”
Santiago, Clark said, is the first person to be convicted by a jury in New York State because of the use of investigative genetic genealogy.
Thanks to a $500,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant in 2023, Bronx prosecutors got some help in their work tackling cold cases.
The genetic genealogy technique involves taking crime scene evidence to develop a profile that is used to search consumer DNA databases for genetic relatives who consented to assist law enforcement.
Using a suspect’s DNA recovered from the rape kits, a family tree can be developed to help identify a suspect like Santiago, who was arrested in 2023.
Two years later, he was convicted in Manhattan following a bench trial on charges of first-degree rape and first-degree burglary.
“Thanks to investigators who did not give up and advancements in forensic science, the case was ultimately solved,” Clark said.
On December 10, 2025, Santiago was sentenced to 20 years in prison on the separate rape case involving a Manhattan woman. The 25-year sentence imposed on Friday will be added to that time.
Santiago’s Manhattan victim, Sarah Clark, spoke at the press conference following the sentencing and praised the new DNA technology that linked her attacker to the crime.
“I hope this is only the beginning,” she said about the genetic genealogy technique. “One down, hopefully thousands more to go.”
Santiago’s attorney, Michael Croce, said his client still maintained his innocence.
“He denies any culpability in this case,” Croce told Judge Busching. “There’s no eyewitness identification in this case. The ID in this case is the DNA evidence. There have been scientific tests in the past that have led us down a path which may not be as reliable as we believe. The defendant is sitting here based on a brand new forensic tool in its infancy in the criminal justice system.”
Croce said Santiago would appeal the conviction. For the last two decades, his client had lived a law-abiding life with his wife and family in Florida, he said.
“Mr. Santiago raised his children with his wife. They moved to Florida. He was working,” Croce said. “For 22 years, Mr. Santiago was never a blip on the radar. No arrests. No convictions.”
Santiago’s wife and family, who were in the gallery, did not speak to reporters following the sentencing.
Despite the defendant’s apparent squeaky-clean life, ADA Martin-Klein implored the judge not to give Santiago a second chance.
“Time did not erase what he did,” Martin-Klein said. “Much of the good character in the defendant’s life was built upon the life that he got to live after that morning after committing that heinous crime.”
“Katy Vicchitto does not get a second chance at the life that she had before December 13, 2001,” she said.
The sentencing came on the same day that a man was arrested in his Brooklyn home for a separate rape case detectives had put together using familial DNA.
Cops said William Stephens, 55, who has no criminal record, was charged with raping a woman on a rooftop in Brooklyn 31 years ago, officials said.
