1995 JOG MURDER SOLVED
Karina slay spurs cold-case crack
The cold-case murder of a Central Park jogger in 1995 has finally been solved — thanks to renewed interest after the slaying of Howard Beach runner Karina Vetrano, The Post has learned.
Brazilian immigrant Maria Isabel Pinto Monteiro Alves, 44, was training for the New York City Marathon when she was savagely beaten at around 6 a.m. on Sept. 17, 1995, near the East Drive and 103rd Street.
The brunette’s murder led to sensational headlines and an avalanche of tips — more than 300 in the first month after her death.
But while more than 50 NYPD detectives were initially assigned to the case, months and then years passed without her killer being caught.
Then, last Aug. 2, Vetrano, 30, was killed in eerily similar circumstances in Queens.
Vetrano’s case prompted NYPD Lt. David Nilsen to take a fresh look at the Alves file, he told The Post Tuesday.
Old witnesses were re-interviewed along with former investigators and prosecutors.
Attention once again focused on Aldopho Martinez, an itinerant “can collector” who had eight prior arrests for crimes, including for rape.
Martinez had been living in an SRO at 55 W. 110th St., near where Alves was found slain.
Nilsen said that over the past several months, three key witnesses who knew Martinez (inset) confirmed elements that pointed unmistakably to his guilt as Alves’ killer:
He was spotted leaving his residence very early on the morning of the slaying, heading toward Central Park. He was then seen returning looking “disheveled, with his pants wet and blood on his hands” shortly after Alves was killed.
He told one witness “there was a murder of a woman in the park” — about three hours before Alves was discovered.
He admitted he had planned to steal Alves’ Sony Walkman that day, after having previously seen her jogging with it. Alves did not take it the day she was killed because it was raining.
Martinez also “told this friend of his on more than one occasion that he was involved in this woman’s murder,” Nilsen said.
Martinez died of tuberculosis on July 10, 1997, almost two years after the slaying.
But that didn’t stop the NYPD and Manhattan District Attorney’s Office from recently taking the unusual step of closing the murder mystery by classifying the homicide with an “exceptional clearance.”
An “exceptional clearance” is deployed only when the suspect’s identity is known but he or she can’t be prosecuted because of extraordinary circumstances such as death or mental infirmity.
In a poignant moment Tuesday, Nilsen broke the news to Alves’ mother that the identity of her daughter’s killer had finally been confirmed.
The mom, Lida Pinto Machado, 87, who lives in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, wept and repeatedly thanked the NYPD, the lieutenant and his detectives.