Ex-firefighter charged in 2009 rape case
Link found as backlog of rape kits processed
Deputies arrested a former Bernalillo County firefighter Wednesday after his DNA matched a 2009 rape case that had been part of a massive backlog of rape kits that is now being processed.
Celso Montaño, 44, is charged with kidnapping and criminal sexual penetration in the rape of a woman in the South Valley.
This isn’t the first time he has faced such accusations. In 2012, Montaño was charged with multiple counts of kidnapping, rape and assault in separate attacks on four women over a three-month period. The women told police they were either sex workers or had accepted a ride from Montaño before he raped them. Montaño ended up pleading no contest in 2014 to two misdemeanor counts each of patronizing prostitution and criminal sexual contact. He was sentenced to three years at the Metropolitan Detention Center — 18 months of which he had already served — and probation.
By that time, Montaño was already on probation on charges of kidnapping and aggravated battery in the November 2009 rape of a woman. The district attorney at the time dropped rape charges because, according to a DA spokeswoman, there were concerns about the credibility of the witness.
The most recent charges stem from a May 2009 incident.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, on May 23 a woman showed up at the University of New Mexico Hospital saying she had been raped, choked and beaten.
During an interview with Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputies, the woman said she was walking on Isleta SW
when she called her uncle for a ride home. Soon after, a man pulled up in a white pickup truck, claiming to be the uncle’s friend, and she got in.
According to the complaint, the woman got nervous and told the man she would walk when he began driving the wrong direction. Deputies say the man pretended to be an undercover cop and struck her before choking and raping her.
The woman told deputies that after the rape, she was thrown onto the ditch bank. A rape kit — evidence collection — was done on the woman, but deputies could not reach her for a follow up, and “the case was closed pending further contact.”
Then in March 2018, the woman’s rape kit — part of the backlog of untested rape kits — came back as a match for Montaño. Deputies were able to speak with the woman again, and she told them much the same story, except that she “asked for money” before being beaten, raped and thrown onto the ditch bank.
In April 2018, detectives got an additional DNA swab from Montaño for testing, and in January 2019 received “strong support for inclusion” of Montaño as a match.
In the past two years, Montaño has been charged with assault upon a peace officer twice, along with lesser charges.
One of the charges stems from an outburst outside the courthouse when police say he yelled, “I’m going to kill me some (expletive) cops” and another when he was pulled over for a non-working taillight and began threatening the officer, throwing his keys and wallet at him.
Both cases were dismissed when the officer or prosecutor failed to show up at court.
The rape kit that matched Montaño’s DNA was tested through the $2.5 million Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, or SAKI, grant.
In 2017, then-Mayor Richard Berry’s administration secured the SAKI money and another grant to clear the backlog after then-State Auditor Tim Keller, now the mayor of Albuquerque, issued a report saying there were about 5,400 rape kits that had been collected as evidence in New Mexico but never processed. The vast majority of the cases, about 4,000, were from Albuquerque.
In early 2018, Keller signed an executive order calling for law enforcement and investigators to create a comprehensive plan for clearing the backlog, setting the wheels in motion toward prosecutions, and imprisonment for those found guilty.