FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Brooklyn Man Sentenced to 75 Years to Life in Prison for
Torturing and Raping Former Girlfriend for Three Days
Victim Was Hogtied, Beaten and Assaulted With Her 2-Year-Old Daughter in the Next Room
Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson today announced that a 31-year-old Brooklyn man was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison for kidnapping, raping and torturing his former girlfriend for three straight days, with their 2-year-old daughter present at the apartment for most of that time. The defendant struck the victim with a dumbbell, cut her feet, shaved off her hair and sexually assaulted her repeatedly until a neighbor called police.
District Attorney Thompson said, “The brutal violence the defendant unleashed on this innocent woman was truly shocking and shows that he is totally unfit to remain in society. I hope that his long prison sentence will bring some solace to the victim and her daughter for all the trauma they have suffered.”
The District Attorney identified the defendant as Alex Anselmo, 31, of 71 Grand Avenue, in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. He was sentenced today by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice John Ingram to 75 years to life in prison following his conviction on September 16, 2015 after a jury trial. The defendant was found guilty of all 17 charges he faced, including first-degree kidnapping, first-degree rape, first-degree burglary, second-degree assault, criminal possession of a weapon, aggravated criminal contempt and related counts.
The District Attorney said that, according to trial testimony, the 31-year-old victim broke up with the defendant, with whom she has two daughters, in the spring of 2012, and he became increasingly obsessive. After learning via Facebook that she met another man and was planning to move to Florida, he grew more incensed, the evidence showed, contacting her in violation of an order of protection taken against him in 2012.
On April 1, 2013, Anselmo pushed his way into the victim’s Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment. He punched her and handcuffed her to the bed, and she remained tied-up for most of the following three days. The defendant raped and sodomized her each day, used a knife to cut her feet, severing a tendon, and beat her with a dumbbell and an extension cord. He threatened to shoot her with a gun, stuffed a sock in her mouth and used clippers to cut off all of her hair. The victim suffered 50 wounds to her body and feet.
The 2-year-old girl was forced to stay in the living room for most of the ordeal and was released by the defendant hours before police arrived. A neighbor called 911 on April 3, 2013 after getting concerned, listening through the door and hearing the cocking of a gun. When police officers from the Emergency Services Unit broke down the door, they found the victim tied to the bed in a formal dress she was forced to wear earlier that day, according to testimony. A revolver was recovered in the apartment.
The District Attorney said that evidence presented at trial showed that the defendant took a cell phone photo of the woman’s stab wound during the crime, which was deleted but later recovered. It also showed that two days prior to the incident he conducted web searches on how many Xanax pills are needed to cause a death and on how to sterilize a woman.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Brooke Cohen of the District Attorney’s Domestic Violence Bureau and Assistant District Attorney Audra Beerman, Deputy Bureau Chief, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Michelle Kaminsky, Bureau Chief.
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