A suspected rape victim of New Jersey attorney Matthew Nilo says it’s “bullshit” that he’s being released from prison.
A bail hearing was held this morning for Nilo, who pleaded not guilty to the rape of four women as a student in 2007 and 2008, with his attorney telling a judge that his client’s family had lost $500,000 in cash from raised his $5 million bail.
One of his alleged victims, wearing a black hoodie and with blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, fidgeted in the second row and gasped audibly.
“This is bullshit!” she told . “He literally hid from the police for 16 years. Why is there no escape risk with him?
“Anyone who makes $500,000 that easily is a fugitive.” And that’s such a heinous crime.’
Nilo, 35, who is being held in a Boston jail, is expected to be released later today. He will leave with a GPS ankle monitor, hand in his passport and has been told not to have contact with victims and witnesses.
Matthew Nilo, 35, has pleaded not guilty to the rape of four different women as a student in Boston in 2007 and 2008
During his college days in 2007, Nilo can be seen partying with friends. Prosecutors said all three women were subjected to a sexual assault investigation, which revealed a DNA profile matching the man in each attack
Nilo is charged with three counts of aggravated rape, two counts of kidnapping, one count of assault with intent to rape, and one count of indecent assault.
After his release, he is ordered to stay at least 1,000 feet from the crime scene, which is Terminal Street in Charlestown.
Nilo, who once lived in the North End, was arrested at his home in Weehawken, New Jersey, more than 15 years after he allegedly terrorized four victims
At the time of the alleged rapes, Boston police issued an alert that a man attacked women after offering to drive them home.
Nilo was identified to law enforcement by family members who voluntarily submitted DNA samples to a genealogy database such as 23 and Me.
According to a police affidavit, a dozen FBI agents and Boston police officers arrested Nilo at his luxury apartment complex.
They lured him into the lobby on the pretext that he had been “delivered a large package that didn’t fit in the … lockers where residents pick up packages.”
At the time of his arrest, he was with his fiancé and immediately invoked his Miranda rights.
Nilo is accused of assaulting the four women on or around Terminal Street in Charleston on August 18, 2007, November 22, 2007, August 5, 2008, and December 23, 2008.
Nilo’s new fiancee Laura Griffin, 37, remained silent and unemotional during a hearing last week
His fiancee clutched the religious beads throughout the hearing but said nothing as she left the courtroom
A 23-year-old woman claims she was approached by a man in his 20s after leaving a friend’s home in the State Street area in the early hours of the morning.
She said she thought she knew the man who offered her a ride to help locate her vehicle before driving her to Terminal Street.
Nilo then allegedly told her to “shut up” or he would kill her and claimed to have a gun before raping her in a meadow near railroad tracks, court records show.
The second attack occurred in November 2007, when a 23-year-old woman exited a bar on State Street after attending a high school reunion.
According to the documents, she got into Nilo’s car, thinking it was a taxi, before giving him the address of an ATM near her home.
She alleges the man pointed a knife at her after she told him he had missed the address and drove her to Terminal Street, where he ordered her out of the car before raping her.
The third attack occurred in August 2008 after Nilo allegedly approached a 36-year-old woman on Boston Common and promised her money if she went to Charlestown with him.
As they got out of the car on Terminal Street, he allegedly “threw her to the ground, put a gun to her back” and repeatedly raped her.
Prosecutors said all three women were subjected to a sexual assault investigation that revealed a DNA profile matching the man in each assault.
Police reopened the investigation last year, using “forensic genetic genealogy,” resulting in Nilo being placed under surveillance in New York
The most recent attack occurred in December 2008, when a 44-year-old woman was attacked while jogging in the Terminal Street area.
Court documents say he approached her from behind, threw her to the ground and sexually assaulted her.
The man, who was later allegedly identified as Nilo, repeatedly told her, “I have a gun,” before she managed to escape by poking his eyes with a glove.
Police reopened the investigation last year, using “forensic genetic genealogy,” resulting in Nilo being placed under surveillance in New York.
According to the filing obtained by the Boston Globe, “FBI agents were able to obtain various paraphernalia and drinking glasses which they observed the defendant using at a corporate event.”
“From one of the jars, the Boston Police Department’s crime lab obtained a male DNA profile that matches the profile of the suspect in the three Terminal Street rapes.”
The glove that the fourth woman used to poke her attacker was also tested, with investigators “finding that this profile was 314 times more likely to belong to Matthew Nilo than any other male in the population.”
Boston police have arrested six people, including Nilo, who has been accused of years of rape, using a $2.5 million federal grant to reopen “unresolved cases that pose the greatest threat to public safety.” to investigate.
Nilo’s attorney, Joseph Cataldo, claimed he received “no indication” that a search warrant was obtained before Nilo’s DNA samples were taken.
Several photos posted to Nilo’s Facebook page at the time showed him leading a life of partying and drinking with his friends
In one of his old photos, he was caught peeing in a hallway
Outside the court, he said, “I take it that there is no search warrant.” “Obtaining DNA and having it analyzed without a permit on a probable cause is unconstitutional in my opinion.”
Nilo grew up in Boston and attended the Boston Latin School before graduating from the University of Wisconsin Madison with a degree in psychology in 2010.
He received his law degree from the University of San Francisco in 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile and records published on the New York State Unified Court System website.
At the time of his arrest, Nilo was working as a cyber claims consultant for Cowbell Cyber and had previously worked as a paralegal at the law firms of Iannella and Mummolo in the two years between his bachelor’s degree and beginning his law studies.
He was then an associate at Clyde & Co based in San Francisco and then an associate at Atheria Law in New York.
Cowbell Cyber suspended Nilo when they learned of the allegations, saying in a statement, “Matthew Nilo was an employee of Cowbell and was hired in January 2023 after passing our background check.” Cowbell has been suspended pending further investigation.”
Nilo has also lived in Wisconsin and New York, and authorities are urging anyone who believes he may have been a victim of Nilo to contact the Boston Police Department or the FBI.
Genetic genealogy used by law enforcement agencies
Genealogy, or lineage testing, which involves entering a DNA profile into a public database to find relatives, has proven to be an effective tool for identifying suspects who leave DNA behind at a crime scene.
Investigators can use it to create a family tree that leads them to an otherwise unknown suspect.
This practice uses DNA testing to determine relationships between individuals, find genetic matches, and determine one’s ancestry.
In forensic genealogy, law enforcement agencies use DNA analysis combined with traditional genealogy research to generate investigative leads for unsolved violent crimes. Forensic genetic genealogical DNA analysis (“FGG”) differs from STR DNA typing in both the type of technology used and the type of databases used.
The tests used by investigative teams allow scientists to identify common blocks of DNA between a forensic sample and the sample donor’s potential relatives.
As each generation’s DNA is passed down, recombination or rearrangement of the genome is expected, resulting in larger shared blocks of identical DNA between closer kin and shorter blocks between more distant kin.
Departments using FGGS must do so in a manner consistent with the requirements and protections of the Constitution and other legal authorities.
In addition, investigative teams must process the information and data derived from FGGS in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, policies and procedures.
When deploying new technologies such as FGGS, government departments must commit to developing practices that protect legitimate privacy interests while allowing law enforcement agencies to use FGGS effectively to identify violent criminals, exonerate innocent suspects, and ensure a fair and impartial administration to ensure justice for all Americans.
Source: United States Department of Justice