COLD-CASE MURDER BUST AFTER 26 YEARS
Ex-gal pal charged in ’90 Harlem slay
She was a typical suburban mom, baking cakes and driving a school bus.
But Zunilda Rosario had a dark secret: She shot dead her cheating, drug-dealing boyfriend in Harlem in 1990 and had evaded capture for the past 26 years, authorities said Friday.
Her luck finally ran out Thursday, when she was nabbed at JFK Airport as she arrived on a flight following a vacation in the Dominican Republic, cops said.
Port Authority police were waiting for her when her plane landed and turned her over to detectives from the NYPD’s 30th Precinct.
“She right away said she wanted a lawyer,” a law-enforcement source said.
Rosario, 48, who had been quietly living in Providence, RI, for years, was done in by an eyewitness to the shooting who stepped forward only this past February, sources said.
She is now charged with seconddegree murder for fatally shooting Juan Deleon, 19, in the head and torso in the lobby of a drug-infested building at 510 W. 150th St. on Feb. 11, 1990, authorities said.
She allegedly fired at the victim at least nine times.
Rosario — who remained stonefaced as she was ordered held without bail during her Manhattan arraignment Friday — had suspected Deleon was cheating on her, authorities said. The couple had two daughters together.
At one point, Rosario, then 22, “pointed a gun at Juan Deleon and expressed a desire to shoot him,’’ the criminal complaint says.
She boasted that she “had learned how to handle guns and how to shoot in the Dominican Republic,” the court papers state, quoting a witness.
After learning he had fathered a child with another woman, Rosario threatened to kill Deleon, his other baby mama and the kid, according to the documents.
She didn’t attend either his wake or funeral, authorities noted.
NYPD spokesman Detective Michael DeBonis insisted to The Post that Rosario “was never ruled out as a possible suspect.”
“However, after the initial interview, detectives were unable to locate her, and the case grew cold,” he said.
A woman who identified herself as Rosario’s relative said: “The day [the murder] happened, she gave the police a statement. They took her statement and tested her hands for gunpowder residue, which came back negative.’’
At the time, Rosario told investigators that a man shot Deleon in front of her and fled.
A law-enforcement source noted that the scene was a hotbed of drug activity and that Deleon’s killing had been the 16th murder in the precinct in two months.
His slaying was one of 2,245 homicides being investigated in the city that year — the highest murder rate ever recorded.
Several years after Deleon’s killing, Rosario left the city with her two daughters and moved to Rhode Island, where she lived under her real name, police sources said.
The eyewitness fingered Rosario more than a quarter-century later, police said. The witness may have waited so long out of fear of reprisal, given Deleon’s background, a source said.
Cops interviewed several more witnesses who also named Rosario as the killer, authorities said.
“This is obviously a very serious crime,” prosecutor Erica Tierney said at Rosario’s arraignment.
The case, Tierney said, “includes witnesses who knew her and the victim and put her at the scene of the homicide.”
Rosario’s lawyer, Christopher Carrion, said in court: “This incident happened 26 years ago. The fact that [someone is] coming forward now speaks volumes to the people’s case.”
Authorities traced Rosario to an address in Providence, but when they got to her home, they were told she was in the Dominican Republic, a source said.
Cops put out a bulletin and were alerted as she came into JFK.
The family member insisted that Rosario was not on the run and that she had moved to Providence in 1996 while regularly traveling back to New York City, unaware she was on the NYPD’s radar. She denied Rosario shot Deleon. “[Deleon] was a philandering a- -hole,” the relative said. But “there was no lover’s quarrel. That was all bulls- -t.”
The woman claimed Rosario went to the West 150th Street building that day to talk with Deleon about their two children.
“She has been wrongfully charged with this,” she said. “This is a woman who has so much integrity. She is a taxpayer. She went to Providence for a better life. This is a woman who would never, never harm anybody. We are all shocked.”
Rosario is due back in court Wednesday.