GUILTY NY - Isabelle Joye, 32, pregnant, raped & murdered, Harlem, NYC, 18 May 1994

By LAURA ITALIANO

Last Updated: 6:34 PM, December 18, 2012
Posted: 6:34 PM, December 18, 2012

Eighteen years after a young boy stumbled on a pregnant woman's raped and strangled body on a Harlem rooftop, her accused killer was hauled before a judge today -- thanks to new testing of old forensics from the horrific slaying.

The murderer of Isabelle Joye, 32, of St. Nicholas Avenue, had left a tissue stained with his DNA nearby, and more of his DNA inside her body and under her fingernails. Now that genetic profile has been matched to imprisoned sex fiend Melvin Kelly, 55, prosecutors said.

At the time, in May of 1994, "Detectives investigated as best they could, but there were over 2,000 murders in New York City that year, and the case went cold," the Manhattan DA's Cold Case Unit chief, Melissa Mourges, told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice A. Kirke Bartley at a brief arraignment today.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/new_dna_evidence_found_in_brutal_xyiCYQ2QBrq9ul4lG0JQaJ

From last month:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/man-sentenced-for-gruesome-1994-murder-1450317905

More than two decades after a pregnant woman was found half-naked and strangled to death on a Harlem rooftop, the man who killed her was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison Wednesday.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Bonnie Wittner sentenced Melvin Kelly, 58 years old, for the 1994 murder of 32-year-old Isabelle Joye...

Mr. Kelly “wiped himself with a Kleenex as he walked away from her dead body,” Ms. Mourges said, “leaving valuable evidence on the rooftop that came back to haunt him so many years later.”

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