(Link from NNN email reporter)
Negro inmate's DNA is linked to three rape-murder cases
Alvin Merrit has been charged
with murdering
Phyllis Flagler and Janet Ramos.
They were dumped like garbage, half-naked, raped and strangled.
For years, the deaths of 25-year-old
Phyliss Flagler, 20-year-old
Janet Ramos and 23-year-old
Sybol Dillard have gone unsolved.
Now Broward Sheriff's Office homicide detectives have charged a man in two of the slayings -- and, according to the arrest affidavit, his DNA matches samples taken from the bodies of all three women.
On April 5, the BSO charged
Alvin A. Merrit, 57, in the Flagler and Ramos cases. He has been in the Miami-Dade County Jail for the past two years, awaiting trial on two separate armed sexual assaults. Miami-Dade police are still investigating the Dillard case; he has not been charged in that crime.
Jorge Viera, listed in court records as Merrit's public defender, couldn't be reached for comment.
Merrit's criminal record dates to 1968. Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show he has been arrested in South Florida 28 times since then on charges including vagrancy, car theft, robbery and kidnapping. Many of the crimes were dismissed, or he was acquitted.
In 1976, he was acquitted of a litany of charges by reason of insanity, including kidnapping, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, two attempted rapes and violation of probation. Merrit was committed to South Florida State Hospital, a mental facility.
In 1980, back on the streets,
Merrit was charged with five rapes. In 1985, he was found incompetent to stand trial and released to mental health services.
BURGLARY CONVICTION
He was convicted of a burglary in 1989 and arrested several more times in the 1990s. Most recently, Merrit was arrested March 6, 2005, and has been in the Miami-Dade jail since.
Now he is charged with the rape and murder of Flagler and Ramos.
Investigators and prosecutors said getting a suspect with a history of mental incompetence to even stand trial can be difficult.
''How do you try and prove that he was crazy back then, but not now? Guys like him already have the stamp; there's a prejudice that he is crazy,'' said Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office. ``He is a malingerer and knows how to act like he's incompetent.''
Detectives have been working the three cases for years. Flagler's body was found Dec. 27, 1994, among litter and debris in a field at 52 NW 14th Ave. in Dania Beach. She had been strangled and raped. The Homestead woman had several boyfriends and preferred life on the streets to her family's home, relatives have said. At the time of her death, she was pregnant and addicted to drugs.
DNA was collected from the crime scene. But at that time, detectives couldn't get a match to a suspect.
But they did learn that the DNA taken from Flagler's body matched that of DNA taken from another woman's body, found March 2, 1999, in a field in Opa-locka. Sybol Dillard, 23, had also been raped and strangled.
DEERFIELD BEACH
On April 18, 2002, Ramos' body was found in the parking lot of the Stanley Terrace Apartments at 414 SW Second St., near Interstate 95, in Deerfield Beach. She had been also been raped and strangled.
DNA samples taken from all three bodies matched. Detectives entered the profile into a state law enforcement database, hoping to match it with a suspect.
In 2004, they got a break. Miami-Dade police told BSO that a rapist's DNA in a recent case in the Miami Shores area matched a sample taken from the Ramos murder scene.
Still, they didn't know whom the DNA belonged to.
The next year, Miami-Dade police arrested a man accused of raping an 18-year-old woman at gunpoint in Northwest Miami-Dade. His DNA was matched to the Miami Shores rape -- and the three others. That was Merrit.
Maria Ramos, who was 18 when her sister Janet was killed, wants Merrit to remain behind bars.
''He just can't be found incompetent. He can't be let out again,'' Ramos, 23, of Memphis, said. ``The system has to work this time.''
