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Adonis Sepulveda (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
A judge in Hackensack today ordered all four to submit to DNA testing.
A lawyer for defendant Jorge Valencia objected, noting that her client worked as a caretaker in the St. Moritz condo building off Gorge Road and calling it “highly invasive.”
“There would almost certainly be samples of his DNA found at the crime scene,” she said.
Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi overruled the objection.
“Samples are all permitted under court rule,” DeAvila-Silebi said. “All defendants will have to submit to the hair sampling and swab of the mouth [called a “buccal” swab] in the medically acceptable manner.”
“All evidence that is not consumed by DNA analysis should be preserved,” she continued.
Valencia — a Colombian national who authorities say masterminded the scheme — is charged along with Ramona Mercado-Vasquez, Mercado-Vasquez, Adonis Sepúlveda, and Alexander Suarez.
None of the other three objected to submitting to DNA testing.
“My client’s position is that she was never in that apartment,” defense attorney Ron Bar-Nadav said.
Lawyers Anthony Alfano and Alan Liebowitz said the same about their clients.
Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
Bar-Nadav and fellow defense attorneys in the case have insisted that Sepulveda and Mercado Vasquez were set up by building employees, and that there is a fifth, unidentified suspect that authorities were searching for.
They haven’t identified anyone, however.
All four defendants remained held on $1 million bail each in the Bergen County Jail on a variety of kidnapping, robbery, conspiracy and weapons charges in connection with the Nov. 26 overnight holdup at the luxury high-rise that Daibes built.
Federal authorities also have slapped a detainer on Valencia (photo below, far right), who had been working as a building superintendent at the St. Moritz, where Daibes, Mercado Vasquez and the two other co-defendants live.
Dabies was tied up with a bag over his head so he couldn’t see what they were doing, prosecutors said. His ribs were broken and $2 million in cash, gold and jewelry was taken during what became a nearly three-hour ordeal.
At one point, the thieves lured the doorman upstairs during the robbery, then tied him up, as well, prosecutors said. Then they took the surveillance video from the doorman’s station, they said.
All of the stolen merchandise was found in the apartment at the St. Moritz building where Vasquez lived with boyfriend and co-defendant Sepulveda, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor David Calviello said earlier this year.
Developer Fred Daibes at previous court appearance (STORY / FILE PHOTO: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
Authorities began searching for Valencia almost immediately after busting Mercado Vasquez and Sepulveda (photo below, second from right) the day after the robbery. They later arrested Suarez of the Bronx, on Dec. 11.
After learning of Valencia’s whereabouts, detectives from Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli’s office alerted the Boston Police Fugitive Unit and U.S. Marshal’s Office, who took him into custody in Massachusetts on Jan. 9.
Hargrove earlier this year told the judge that Valencia fled to the Boston area after being threatened by Daibes’s family. She claimed that Valencia was willing to work with police but didn’t trust that he’d be protected.
Calviello said he didn’t know of any threats. He also said that Valencia bolted from the rent-free apartment given to him by his former boss of 17 years once he knew that investigators were interested in him.
STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
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