Colono guilty in Allston home invasion, adding to sentence for Cambridge attack
Marcos Colono is seen in a 2003 video from NECN.
A Cambridge man has been found guilty on all charges of raping two women during a 2008 home invasion in Allston, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said Wednesday.
A Suffolk Superior Court jury deliberated for one day before finding Marcos Colono, 36, guilty of four counts of aggravated rape, two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and single counts of home invasion and armed burglary. Judge Janet Sanders will sentence Colono on July 10.
“This vicious attack was a nightmare for the victims and their loved ones,” Conley said. “Their strength leading up to trial and their testimony before the jury have made Boston a safer place. We could not have achieved this result without their courage.”
In March 2013, Colono was found guilty in connection with a Cambridge home invasion and sentenced to up to 85 years in prison. The Aug. 26, 2010, home invasion on Pearl Street resulted in the stabbing of a 53-year-old Harvard researcher and his young son.
Assistant District Attorney Holly Broadbent, chief of the DA’s Sexual Assault Unit, presented evidence and testimony to prove that Colono gained access to the victims’ Commonwealth Avenue apartment on the night of Sept. 21, 2008, while wearing a mask and wielding a knife. Colono threatened them, assaulted them, bound them with extension cords and left the apartment with their identification cards and other property.
As part of their investigation, Boston Police collected DNA from the scene and entered it into an FBI database, but there were no matches.
Two years later, however, the DNA recovered at the Commonwealth Avenue scene was matched to that recovered from the scene of a home invasion targeting a man and his son in Cambridge. Fingerprints collected at the Cambridge crime scene were linked to Colono through prints on file for an arrest in Boston. The Suffolk County Grand Jury issued an order for Colono’s DNA, which was shown to be a match to the biological evidence recovered from the Brighton victims’ rape kits.
“Many years ago, this case might have gone unlinked to the one in Cambridge,” Conley said. “They were two different attacks in two different cities. But the power of DNA and the testimony of victims and witnesses linked them, solved them and put a predator behind bars for good.”
Colono is the brother of a man stabbed to death in 2003 by Harvard graduate student Alexander Pring-Wilson.
This post took significant amounts of material from a press release.
