'William Giraldo was jailed and threatened after being wrongly accused of being Brooklyn serial sex fiend'

William Giraldo was jailed and threatened after being wrongly accused of being Brooklyn serial sex fiend
Police pressured Giraldo to confess, then sent him to Rikers until DNA proved his innocence

BY Tracy Connor
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Originally Published: Thursday, December 8 2011, 6:38 PM
Updated: Friday, December 9 2011, 5:00 AM


William Giraldo was wrongly accused of being the Brooklyn groper, responsible for a string of sex attacks. He was sent to Rikers and threatened with deportation before DNA cleared him.



Brooklyn livery driver William Giraldo’s buddies were laughing when they called him one day in June to say he looked just like a guy in a video of a rape suspect.

Busy with wedding plans, Giraldo laughed it off, too — until that night, when he sat at the computer with his fiancee and found the grainy footage.

He was stunned the man on the screen, wanted for a terrifying series of sex attacks, didn’t just look like him — it was him.

“I panicked,” he said. “I didn’t know what was going on.”

From that moment, Giraldo was trapped in a nightmare that grew scarier at every turn.

He was picked out of a lineup, arraigned on his wedding day, sent to Rikers, threatened with deportation.

It wasn’t until five months later — a month in detention and agonizing weeks of uncertainty — that DNA cleared him and charges were dropped.

“They destroyed my life — and they didn’t even say sorry,” Giraldo, 25, told the Daily News.

He came forward to tell the story of how an innocent man accused of a high-profile crime had his life derailed by the justice system — and is still struggling to get it back on track.

It started about 3 a.m. on June 4 when Giraldo went to a Dunkin Donuts in Sunset Park for coffee and a chocolate frosted before taking a fare to Kennedy Airport.

Around the same time, a 29-year-old woman leaving the store was followed home and raped in her vestibule.

Police believed the assailant was the man who attacked three women since March — who would come to be known as the Brooklyn Groper.

They circulated the video of Giraldo, who fit the basic description, to the media.

A sick feeling came over Giraldo as he watched it.

Nothing to hide

Giraldo called his mother, sister and brother-in-law to the Bensonhurst home and they decided to go to the 66th Precinct stationhouse.

He didn’t call a lawyer and remembers thinking, “I don’t have anything to hide, so why not go over there and clear my name.”

He was nervous when he walked in, but he thought he would be questioned and freed. Instead, a special victims detective drove him to her unit.

Hours of interrogation followed. Detectives cycled in and out, urging him to confess.

“I told them I have nothing do to with this,” he said. “Detectives were telling me to confess to something I didn’t do, saying it would be easier for me, they would reduce my sentence.”

He was put in four lineups, each with four other men — tall, short, Hispanic and not.

“I have nothing to fear,” Giraldo told himself as the unseen victims sized him up. But deep down, he was a wreck.

“I had a small window looking out at the street, and I was thinking, ‘I might never see the street again,’” he recalled.

When the lineups were over, a detective told him he was being booked.

“I was crying,” he said.

Police had asked him for DNA to compare to DNA from the victim, and he agreed. He said cops told him the results would be ready in 72 hours.

The next morning, Giraldo was arraigned for rape. He couldn’t make $100,000 bail and was packed off to Rikers.

“It was horrible,” he said.

He was back in court that Friday. A judge ordered him released without bail after prosecutors revealed an indictment wasn’t forthcoming, but he was turned over to immigration.

Giraldo came from Colombia in 1999 on a tourist visa and had planned to get a green card when he wed Sandra, a citizen.

Now he faced the possibility he might be exonerated but deported.

“The first thing you think is, ‘Why us?’” Sandra said.

Giraldo spent a month in detention, during which time the sex fiend struck again.

After he was freed July 13, he and Sandra finally had a City Hall wedding.

When he returned to court Sept. 8, he hoped the case would be closed. Instead, prosecutors asked for more time.

DNA results were in by a Nov. 15 hearing, and the charges were dismissed.

It took about five minutes.

“It was like, ‘We messed up your life, but it’s fine, it’s dismissed, goodbye!’” said Sandra.

‘How could they do this?’

Defense lawyer Heriberto Cabrera said the main culprit was a backlog of DNA cases at the NYPD lab. Giraldo isn’t sure who to blame.

He isn’t angry at the victim, and he called the arresting detective “a nice person.”

But he wishes someone — perhaps the police commissioner, who announced his arrest — would apologize.

“How could they do this to me without being sure?” he said.

Three weeks after being cleared, Giraldo is haunted by the ordeal. He can’t find work and is saddled with legal debt.

He dreads the day his older children Google his name and he avoids going out alone.

“When I’m on the train, I try to hide,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to see me and say, ‘That’s the guy .’”

But he’s trying to stay positive.

He marvels that his wife stuck by him. “What more proof that she really loves me?” he said.

The deportation case is on hold, and he and Sandra are expecting a baby girl in April.

“For once,” he said, “I feel free.”