Metro

Prostitute finally gets justice in rape

When a Manhattan prostitute cried rape in 2006, cops at first did not believe her, leaving the rapist free to rape a second woman two years later.

But today, a jury believed the prostitute, and she saw justice. Her attacker, Kevin Rios, was convicted of raping and robbing the terrified woman during a knifepoint attack during a trick-turned-nightmare in a West Side parking lot.

“You’re a hooker — I can kill you and no one would even care,” the pretty victim had testified that Rios, 23 of Spanish Harlem, taunted her while he and a never-captured accomplice raped her in her minivan.

Only when Rios was linked to the 2008 knifepoint rape of a Harlem babysitter — by DNA from the prostitute’s crime scene — did cops track her down and prosecute, according to law enforcement sources.

“That poor babysitter didn’t have to be raped — if the detectives had done their job,” said one source familiar with the crime. Other sources said the prostitute suffered from initial drug and “availability” issues.

Rios is currently serving 15-to-life on the babysitter’s rape, and this second conviction could help him never get parole.

Investigators initially did little legwork on the prostitute’s case — even though she’d immediately given them Rios’ license plate and his DNA, both defense lawyers and prosecutors conceded in closing arguments.

Her stolen car even turned up just a street away from Rios’ address — but Rios was never questioned at the time.

“They had a license plate and didn’t run it,” Rios defense lawyer Kimberly Summers told jurors in arguing during closings today that the prostitute was not credible. “They didn’t do anything,” the lawyer said.

Rios had claimed he, the victim and his friend had a spontaneous, consensual threesome that night and that he didn’t even know she was a prostitute — absurd claims a jury took less than a day to discredit.