A Brooklyn jury Thursday shockingly acquitted an East Village man in the 1987 cold-case stabbing murder of a teenaged Sunset Park beauty — leaving her family in anguished tears.
“I want my daughter!” the mother of tragic Lissette Torres, 19, wailed in Spanish after the surprise verdict, as she and stunned family members left a Brooklyn Supreme Court courtroom.
Amazingly, jurors said they thought Edwin Alcaide, 54, was probably guilty. But the evidence — which included his DNA being recovered from under the corpse’s fingernails — just wasn’t enough, jurors insisted.
“I really felt in my gut that he did it,” said juror Virice Webb, 27.
“Every last single one of us strongly believed that most of the evidence and the witness statements were pointing towards the fact that he did commit this crime,” she said.
But the prosecution’s evidence — which also included witnesses who testified that Alcaide had scratches on his face after the murder, and that he and the victim were smoking crack together hours before her disappearance — failed to place Alcaide at the murder scene, they complained.
“Nobody saw him there,” said Webb. “There was no witness, and there was nothing that actually placed him there.”
Another juror said she was thrown off by the prosecution failing to produce a hair that had been collected from the corpse’s hand. The hair, collected and vouchered by cops 23 years ago, was no where to be found when prosecutors re-opened the case in 2010.
“Most of us started off guilty and had they been able to provide that hair sample, we would’ve been at guilty,” said another juror who asked her name not be used.
“Without the hair sample, we have no idea where those scratches happened,” that juror said.
Alcaide had no reaction as he sat at the defense table at Brooklyn Supreme Court and the verdict was read. He declined comment as he pulled a black woolen hat over his head and walked out of court a free man.
But the family of the slain young woman, which has kept vigil throughout the week-long trial, including three days of deliberations, clasped each others’ hands and sobbed audibly in the audience.
“We’re devastated by the not guilty verdict,” Torres’ best friend, Lizzette Sierra, 46, said afterward.
“We thought the DNA evidence was enough. We know in our hearts it was him. He’s going to have to answer to God ultimately,” she added.
Alcaide had been linked to the crime in 2010, when the case was reopened and the skin sample — collected from under three of Torres’ fingernails — was retested, coming up a match to the registered sex offender with a long rap sheet.
Prosecutors said Torres and Alcaide had been smoking crack together in Alcaide’s bedroom in the hours before he stabbed her in the neck 15 times on New Year’s Eve, then left her to die in a vacant Sunset Park parking lot.
“She fought back and she grabbed a piece of him under her nails,” Prosecutor Nicole Itkin had told jurors in closing arguments Tuesday. Alcaide also had scratches on his neck when he was questioned — and released — after the murder.
The defense had countered that Alcaide was pals with Torres’ drug-dealing boyfriend, and that the three hung out together “like The Three Musketeers.”
Alcaide had no motive to kill his pal, and his DNA could have been transferred to Torres by innocent means, defense lawyer Jesse Young told jurors.
“The verdict speaks to the fact that DNA, although it’s compelling, it’s not infallable and that you have to look at the whole case,” Young said after court.
“He’s very pleased and happy to be walking out into the cold, clear, fresh air,” he said of Alcaide.
“The three of them together were the Three Musketeers. No motive. No reason for him to harm his friend Lisette,” said Young.
According to testimony, Torres, was last seen getting into a cab with Alcaide early on New Year’s Day 1987, in hopes of finding her boyfriend who was taken to a local police precinct following a fight. Her bloodied body was found hours later.
Torres’ family and friends have kept vigil during the trial, which began last Wednesday.