A Florida man was sentenced to 20 years in state prison for a rape that happened in a Midtown apartment more than two decades ago, a cold case that investigators say they finally cracked using a groundbreaking DNA technique. Jancys Santiago, 50, was convicted after a bench trial of breaking into a 27-year-old woman's apartment in May 2000, where he had been hiding in her closet before attacking her.
According to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, the woman came home on May 23, 2000, and discovered Santiago wearing a mask inside her apartment. He was found guilty on September 30, 2025, of first-degree rape and first-degree burglary following a New York State Supreme Court bench trial, and was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison followed by five years of post-release supervision. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced the sentence on December 10, 2025; the New York Daily News article was published on December 11, 2025.
DNA Match Linked Two Cold Cases
The case sat unsolved for years until investigators turned to investigative genetic genealogy, a technique that takes crime-scene DNA and searches consumer genealogy databases for consenting genetic relatives who might lead police to a suspect. That method connected the Manhattan attack to a separate assault reported in December 2001, when Santiago allegedly entered a sleeping 21-year-old woman's apartment in the Bronx and raped her, per the Manhattan DA's office. The Bronx survivor's rape kit generated a DNA profile that matched the donor profile from the Manhattan case, prosecutors said.
Those genetic genealogy results ultimately helped identify Santiago, who was 48 at the time his indictment was announced. The Manhattan DA's office described the two cases as the first sexual assault cases in New York State solved using investigative genetic genealogy. The work was funded through a three-year, $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance to the Bronx District Attorney's Office to solve cold cases, the office said, a detail also noted by the Daily News in its report on the sentencing.
Bronx Case Status Disputed
As of the Manhattan DA's December sentencing announcement, the Bronx case tied to the 2001 assault remained open and pending, according to the office's own statement. However, News12 Bronx reported this week that Santiago was sentenced to 25 years in prison for that same 2001 rape. The two accounts conflict, and it is not independently confirmed here whether the Bronx case has since reached a final disposition, what that disposition entailed, or how a Bronx sentence might relate to the one already imposed in Manhattan.
An indictment is only an accusatory instrument and is not proof of guilt, the Manhattan DA's office has noted regarding the broader case. The technique used to identify Santiago is part of a wider and still-developing trend in forensic investigations; a 2024 review published by the PubMed Central database describes investigative genetic genealogy as a method that has grown in prominence, popularity, and use in the United States and internationally. Similar approaches have been used elsewhere, including a New Jersey State Police cold case referred for genetic genealogy analysis at the Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center in 2023, according to that center's own case records.
