26 YEARS & GOTCHA!
Gal pal busted in 1990 murder
FOR 26 YEARS, Zunilda Rosario hid in plain sight with the secret of her two-timing lover’s Harlem murder — even raising their two fatherless girls, cops said.
The investigation into the icecold case ended in handcuffs when Rosario, 48, was busted at Kennedy Airport for shooting her cheating boyfriend Juan Deleon in a fit of jealous rage, police said Friday. Deleon was 19.
The accused killer was nabbed Thursday after flying into the city from a trip to the Dominican Republic. She was jailed without bail after a Friday afternoon arraignment for the murder that abruptly ended her tumultuous romance with the slain man.
Deleon was riddled with nine bullets and left for dead in the lobby of a Harlem building, shot in the face and torso by a killer who fled into the night.
“This is a very strong circumstantial case,” prosecutor Erin Tierney declared at the suspect’s drama-free Manhattan Criminal Court arraignment.
“It includes witnesses who knew the defendant and victim, and put her at the scene,” she continued. “This is obviously a very serious crime.”
Rosario, wearing a black sweater, white sneakers and a look of shock, sat silently as her lawyer insisted the veteran bus driver — a Rhode Island resident since 1996 — posed no flight risk.
The frosty investigation into the Feb. 11, 1990, murder turned red-hot once a witness surfaced this past February with a tale of the couple fighting just minutes before the shooting, police sources said.
A current resident told the Daily News that a former resident from a quarter-century back returned to the crime scene a few months ago with police.
“The person that died, if it was my relative, I would be elated that they caught the woman who did it,” said the resident, who asked not to be identified.
Rosario, in an interview with police two days after the shooting, claimed she was arguing with her boyfriend when a lone gunman approached and shot Deleon, according to a criminal complaint.
The four-page document told a different tale: Rosario became infuriated after Deleon fathered a son with another woman in 1989, and she had previously threatened to kill the victim at least twice.
In one instance, she pointed a gun at Deleon — but didn’t pull the trigger, according to the criminal complaint. One informant told police Rosario had also threatened to kill Deleon’s other girlfriend and their newborn son.
The criminal complaint cited four witnesses who provided information leading to the arrest.
A family friend insisted cops cleared Rosario in the murder. The now-single mother and her two daughters left New York and ultimately settled in Providence, R.I., in 1996, police sources said.
The complaint charged that Deleon and Rosario were seen by two informants in the vestibule inside W. 150th St. near Amsterdam Ave.
One saw the couple via video surveillance at the building that Rosario’s friend described as a well-known drug stash house back in the era of the crack epidemic. The second informant actually walked past the pair, the complaint said.
Neither one actually saw the shooter responsible for spraying the vestibule with bullets.
The Rosario friend, who declined to give her name, remained adamant the accused killer was innocent — noting she stayed in the city after Deleon was killed.
“She was not some kind of fugitive,” said the friend. “The cops cleared her and she and her daughters were here for five or six years before she left.”
Even after moving to Rhode Island, Rosario and her daughters returned to the upper Manhattan neighborhood every year for the holidays.
“She and the girls grew up in this community and were part of the community until she saw an opportunity to go to Providence,” the friend added. “This has reasonable doubt written all over it.”