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Jose Augusto Masmelasarmiento (MUGSHOT: Courtesy Bergen County Prosecutor)
“It’s him,” the now-26-year-old victim told a confidant, recounting the May night when she was thrown to the ground and attacked by a man who police never caught.
After hearing her full story, investigators from Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli’s Special Victims Unit late Monday afternoon charged 46-year-old Jose Augusto Masmelasarmiento with the 2001 assault.
A judge then doubled his bail to $300,000.
Alerts have been sent to various departments asking whether they have unsolved cases with similar circumstances, CLIFFVIEW PILOT has learned.
Fort Lee, for one, had an incident in 2005 in which a stranger in a workshirt pretending to be a handyman accosted a 9-year-old girl left home alone (NOTE: The author of this story was a newspaper editor who supervised coverage of that incident). Investigators at the time said they had a crucial piece of evidence that could crack that case if they found the right suspect.
Masmelasarmiento, a Colombian native who lives on Park Avenue in Fairview, already was being held in the Bergen County Jail following his arrest Thursday on charges of molesting a woman when she was a young teenager nine years ago.
The second woman clicked onto CLIFFVIEW PILOT this weekend. Seeing his mugshot, she reached out to a confidant.
Soon after, she gave detectives details no one else would know of the May 3, 2001 assault on Palisade Plaza, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the case told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Records from the incident were pulled and county detectives were soon bringing charges in yet another cold case – a hallmark of Molinelli’s administration as Bergen prosecutor.
“Next to solving a murder, these are the guys you want to take off the street,” a law enforcement source with knowledge of the case told the website.
(NOTE: CLIFFVIEW PILOT first contacted Molinelli about this case yesterday and then again today, giving him details of this story. In a news release this afternoon, the prosecutor said: “The victim in the 2001 Cliffside Park, NJ investigation saw Jose Masmelasarmiento’s arrest photograph on-line through a media published account of his arrest and identified him as the actor who sexually assaulted her on May 3, 2001. After the assault was reported, a police investigation was conducted by the Cliffside Park Police Department and Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Unit.”)
It was around 9 at night when an attacker threw the then-15-year-old girl to the ground and molested her in 2001.
She immediately reported it to Cliffside Park police, but no arrests were made. The detective who originally caught the case has since died.
The original report said the girl told police she screamed but no help came. It also included photos of scratch marks she said she sustained in the struggle.
Masmelasarmiento, who works in Hackensack, is due in Fairview Municipal Court tomorrow and in Cliffside Park Municipal Court on Thursday night.
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