Police closed the book on a 1987 cold case this week when they arrested a man in connection with the murder of a 19-year-old girl in Brooklyn.
Edwin Alcaide was detained by police Thursday night for the stabbing death of Lissette Torres on New Year’s Eve in 1987.
For Torres’ family, the arrest was a long time coming. The NYPD’s Cold Case squad reopened the investigation in 2010, posting flyers around the neighborhood where she was killed, asking for information that might help solve the case.
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On New Year’s Eve in 1987, Torres left her home, telling her family she would be back by midnight to ring in the new year with them. That was the last time they saw her alive. Her body was discovered the next day in a lot under the Gowanus Expressway in Sunset Park.
The case went cold, and although Edwin Alcaide was questioned during the original investigation, nobody was ever detained for the murder.
Alcaide, who was 28 at the time of the murder, and the victim were acquaintances, and sources told ABC News affiliate WABC that Torres and Alcaide fought before she was killed.
This year, police were able to match DNA from tissue samples found under Torres’ nails to DNA from Edwin Alcaide, who is in the system as a Level 3 sex offender. He has prior arrests for rape, drug dealing, attempted murder, robbery and sexual assault, according to WABC.
The sexual assault conviction, a 1998 charge of first-degree sexual abuse of an 8-year-old boy, was the one that got his DNA in the registry, and eventually connected him with Torres’ murder.
“I can now die in peace,” Lissette’s mother Rose told the New York Daily News, “knowing that my daughter now lies in peace.”
