Parents speak out as New Paltz man faces life for murder of toddler

Weiner noted that Rodriguez had voluntarily submitted to a DNA swab and an interview with investigators hours after Medina Pérez’s body was discovered. And, while cops were eager to get Rodriguez’s DNA early in the investigation, they did not seek a sample from his wife — the only other person known to be in the house at the time of the crime — for four months. That, and other lapses by law enforcement, Weiner said indicted an “incredibly incomplete investigation” by detectives convinced that they already had their man (Rodriguez was not indicted for the crime until March 2013, something Carnright attributed to the complex nature of the case). Finally, Weiner told the jury, evidence would show that Rodriguez was a loving uncle who cared for his tiny guest with the same devotion given to his own children.

“You would have to believe that somehow from a caring uncle he turned — in a minute — into a monster,” said Weiner.

The sequence of events

Both sides agreed on one thing, that a terrible crime took place sometime on the morning of June 20, 2012. That’s when police were called to the rented house where Medina Pérez was staying with Rodriguez, her aunt and her cousins — a boy age six and a girl, five. New Paltz Police officer Syndi Acampora was first on the scene. The veteran cop broke down in tears as she recounted the scene — captured on her patrol car video recorder — that greeted her when she pulled into the driveway; Joseph Rodriguez sitting on the grass in the front yard, his wife sitting a few yards in front of him rocking back and forth, wailing, clutching a tiny body covered in leaves and dirt. An autopsy, described in Carnright’s opening statement, turned up a litany of horrific injuries including bruising, strangulation marks and multiple skull fractures which damaged the girl’s brain and caused her death.

In a videotaped interview with a state police investigator, Rodriguez gave his version of the events leading up the gruesome discovery. Rodriguez told the State Police investigator that after bringing home pizza for his family around 9 p.m. on June 19, he’d spent the remainder of the night hanging out with an old friend — a prostitute — in Newburgh. Arriving home around 6 a.m., Rodriguez told cops he discovered his wife sick in bed. Rodriguez said that he’d stayed up long enough to wake the two school-age children and get them on the bus to school, leaving Asia asleep in the room she shared with her cousins. Then, he told police, he went to the bedroom, lay down next to his wife, watched TV and went to sleep. Rodriguez said that he awoke around noon to his wife, alarmed, informing him that Asia was not in her bed. Rodriguez, at times in tears, then describes a frantic search through the house, the discovery of the air conditioner on the floor and the open window in the spare bedroom and finally, finding Asia’s body on the slope behind the house. Asked by an investigator if he believes the girl could have fallen out the window or met some other accident, Rodriguez is adamant — it was murder.

“There’s no plausible accidental thing that I could see happening,” Rodriguez tells the investigator.

In his statement, Rodriguez makes no mention of a flurry of activity on his cell phone — some 25 outgoing calls or texts some just seconds apart on the morning of the murder as described by a T-Mobile representative called to the stand by Carnright to interpret the records. Nor did he mention the shirt that investigators would later find smelling of bleach but stained with Asia’s blood in the dryer.

Police reports

New Paltz Police dog handler Robert Knoth described leading his K-9 Rex on a search through the woods surrounding the house — a search which failed to turn up any human scent trail. Lead investigator Detective Sergeant Robert Lucchesi testified about the early stages of the investigation, including a grid search of the area around the house. In his cross examination of the officers, Weiner focused on potential fodder for his theory that cops focused in on Rodriguez while ignoring other potential suspects. Knoth — who said that he did not “cast” for human scent in areas where responding officers had gathered — conceded that a suspect could conceivably have walked out the front door and up Route 32 through an area not covered by the search. On cross examination, Lucchesi said that police had not taken DNA samples or fingernail scrapings from Dalia Rodriguez, or sought to take as evidence the shirt, pants or shoes that she was wearing when she carried Asia’s body to the driveway. Nor did detectives take photographs or perform a physical examination of the woman, while both procedures were carried out on Joseph Rodriguez early in the investigation.

“The police and [the prosecution] decided ‘we have our guy,” Weiner said in his opening statement. “And they really didn’t look anywhere else.”

Testimony in Rodriguez’s trial is set to resume on Tuesday, Nov. 12. New Paltz Times will provide continuing coverage of the proceedings.