After 27 years, trial in teen slay

A GRIEVING Brooklyn family’s decades-long wait to see their loved one’s killer face a jury ended Wednesday when the trial of Edwin Alcaide got underway.

Alcaide, 54, is accused of brutally killing 19-year-old Lissette Torres in Sunset Park, stabbing her 15 times in and around her

EXCLUSIVE face in the early hours of Jan. 1, 1987.

“This has been 27 years in the making, almost to the day,” prosecutor Nicole Itkin said in her opening statement in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

She described how Torres was last seen with Alcaide that New Year’s Day; how she spent the night hanging out at his home with her drug-dealer boyfriend, and how a cabbie recalled taking her with Alcaide to the local police precinct, where her boyfriend had gone earlier that night.

About an hour after the visit to police, Torres’ body was discovered in a nearby parking lot.

Alcaide, a career criminal with arrests dating back to 1975, was questioned twice by cops, the first time a day after the slaying.

He had scratches on his face, which he blamed on a scuffle with a neighborhood rival. But that man said he didn’t know Alcaide, the case detective testified.

There were no arrests or breaks in the case until 2010, when a cold-case detective asked for a DNA test of the victim’s fingernails. A match came back to Alcaide, who was nabbed at a July 2012 parole meeting.

“We waited so long,” said Torres’ sister Lourdes Garcia, 48, one of several relatives in court. “We just hope for justice.”

Testimony was cut short when the sickly defendant complained about medical issues.