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Man charged in West Boca nanny's death
A Peruvian nanny's murder that haunted a community west of Boca Raton for more than a year was solved Friday with the arrest of a man in North Carolina, sheriff's officials said.
Jerry Wiggins, 28, was in a Charlotte, N.C., jail on other sex-crime charges when Palm Beach County detectives accused him in the January 2004 death of
Monica Rivera-Valdizan. Earlier Friday, authorities also said the handyman and former Boca Raton-area man was being charged with a 2003 rape in Coral Springs.
Rivera-Valdizan's body was found along Montoya Circle North in the Boca del Mar neighborhood where she worked as a live-in nanny.
After investigators spent thousands of hours following hundre
ds of leads -- even enlisting the help of criminal
profilers and the America's Most Wanted television show -- it was Wiggins committing another crime that broke the case, officials said.
He is accused of raping a Charlotte woman on Oct. 12. Detectives there entered DNA evidence into a national database and got a match-- DNA evidence from Valdizan's murder.
"This is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle." Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said Friday. "Sometimes the puzzle doesn't become clear until you get a lot of pieces put together in one spot."
Those pieces include an arrest warrant for Wiggins in the rape of a 14-year-old girl in Coral Springs, DNA and the victim in the North Carolina case identifying Wiggins as her attacker.
Rivera-Valdizan was killed not long after coming to Palm Beach County to perfect her English and work for a family living on Alyssum Way.
"Monica Rivera-Valdizan came to this country to live and work and fo
llow
the American dream," Bradshaw said. "That dream was cut short when her life was taken."
Her bod
y was found three days after she disappeared on Jan. 2, 2004. Valdizan liked to take nighttime walks and was last seen at the Publix in the Garden Shops at West Palmetto Park and Powerline roads.
Rivera-Valdizan's murder sent fear and anxiety through the predominantly Orthodox Jewish community west of Boca Raton where residents typically took Sabbath strolls until her killing.
Residents welcomed news of a break in the case and said closure now seemed possible.
"It would be fantastic if it's the right guy," Diane Luff, 59, said while outside a deli in the Garden Shops Shopping Center.
At the plaza frequented by Rivera-Valdizan, some shoppers said they hadn't forgotten about the slaying but the initial fear had subsided.
"My daughter would go to tan at night. I used to be nervous about h
er going
there, said Dorothy Levasseur, 63, who lives nearby.
Investigators didn't reveal Rivera-Valdizan's cause of death.
"This is going to be a DNA success," Capt. Ric
k Williams of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
On Oct. 12, a man broke into a 24-year-old woman's Charlotte apartment and raped her at knifepoint, Williams said. The two knew each other through a friend, though the alleged victim only knew him as "Jay."
His department called the Palm Beach County sheriff's crime lab Friday and said information in a national DNA database revealed that their cases involved the same unknown suspect.
Monday, sheriff's officials called back and by Tuesday detectives were on a plane headed to Charlotte.
Within a day, Wiggins had been identified and arrested at his mother's home on first-degree charges of rape, sex offense, kidnapping and burglary.
"His first inclination was to go out the b
edroom windo
w. But he was arrested without incident," Williams said.
The alleged victim identified Wiggins as her attacker through a photo lineup, officials said. He is being held at the Mecklenburg County Jail without bond.
The Sheri
ff's Office charged him with first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual battery charges in Rivera-Valdizan's death. It hadn't been determined Friday if he would be extradited back to Florida.
Officials have not confirmed that the DNA from either case belongs to Wiggins.
"We are able to tell you that the DNA recovered on the scene is believed to be that of Mr. Wiggins," because the victim identified him, Sheriff's Capt. David Carhart said. "We are awaiting confirmation ... but to tell you the truth, it's a technicality at this point."
A DNA profile is created then entered into the national database, said Amy McGuekian, a senior forensic scientist at the sheriff's crime lab. The profiles
are compared to
new ones entered, she said.
Wiggins had not given a DNA sample to investigators Friday, officials said.
Detectives had not established if Rivera-Valdizan's death was a random act, but said that the common thread in the two other cases allegedly involving Wiggins is that he knew both wom
en prior to the attacks.
In the Coral Springs case, the 14-year-old bumped into Wiggins at a basketball court and the two started talking, according to a police report. They headed to a friend's home and got drunk and high before going to his apartment in the 3600 block of Terrapin Lane, the report said.
There, he raped her repeatedly and refused to let her leave, the report said.
The teen went to the police and was able to pick Wiggins out of a photo lineup. There was confusion over Wiggins' apartment number and by the time it was sorted out, he had skipped town, Nicorvo said.
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