Suspect In 2010 Pa. Rapes Brought Back From Mexico
By Justin Finch
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- At a press conference Tuesday, Philadelphia Police and the FBI set the scene of the four-year manhunt for Alberto Isaac Navarrete Suarez.
Police said the 37-year-old Mexican national is responsible for a rape that took place across the street from their Center City headquarters.
Suarez charges include rape, sexual assault, aggravated assault and attempted murder. He is being held on a $5-million dollar bail.
"It was on Sunday, August 29, 2010, approximately 9:30 pm," Lt. Anthony McFadden explained. "We had a young, 22-year-old female walking along the 200 block of North 8th Street, at which time, she was approached from behind."
McFadden said Suarez grabbed, dragged, and raped her by the SEPTA Broad-Ridge spur just steps away from the bus stop where she was standing.
Police later released surveillance video of a man running from the scene without pants. The pants were found, and with them, a wallet, a fake Mexican license, and a critical clue for investigators.
"We recovered a camera," McFadden said. "We conducted a search warrant on that camera and from the images we found on that camera, locations where these pictures were taken, addresses that were seen on the pictures, we were able to track him to a house he was staying in South Philadelphia."
Tips from that house led police to Suarez's friends and family in the United States and Mexico. They helped the FBI and police track his movements from the Pittsburgh area, where Suarez is wanted for a March 2010 rape, to Philadelphia by that August, to Texas, and finally, to Mexico, where investigators said slipped across the border to dodge arrest in September 2010. The surveillance took roughly one year.
Soon after, an FBI Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution warrant was issued; and by April 2012, Mexican used it to arrest and jail Suarez. This week, Mexican courts approved his extradition, and Monday night, he was flown to Philadelphia with official escorts.
"We thought it was very fitting that a Philadelphia Police officer, accompanied by an FBI agent, traveled to Mexico City, put the handcuffs on Alberto Suarez and brought him back to Philadelphia," said Edward Hanko, a Special Agent with the FBI's Philadelphia Division.
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