POI/Suspect

[ShowerSinger]

10:38 a.m. EDT, July 7, 2010
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A judge on Wednesday ordered Fernandito Carpio to stay in jail without bond on charges that he tried to rape and murder a woman near the Mall at Millenia.

Carpio, a 22-year-old felon who already has spent time in a New Jersey prison, shut his eyes as Senior Circuit Court Judge Thomas Kirkland at the Orange County Jail read the charges of attempted rape and attempted murder in the June 13 case.

He is accused of choking and attempting to rape a woman in the pool bathroom at the Fountains at Millenia apartments in Orlando.

However, Carpio will probably soon return to court because he faces additional charges in a separate attack on another victim.



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A woman at the nearby Place on Millenia Boulevard apartments identified Carpio as the man who raped her and cut her on the throat July 2.

Sgt. Barbara Jones of the Orlando Police Department said details of that case are unavailable because Carpio has not been charged with those allegations.

Prison records show Carpio, originally of Newark, N.J., has a violent past.

He was convicted of aggravated assault and theft in 2007, according to the New Jersey Department of Corrections. Although he was sentenced to serve eight years behind bars, records show he spent three years in an Essex County prison.

Prison officials released Carpio in February — about four months before police said he nearly killed and raped the Orlando women.

The victim in the June attack said she was at the pool while visiting a friend at the Fountains at Millenia apartments when she noticed Carpio walking around the area.

Police said she had described him as wearing long, dark shorts; dark, buttoned shirt, white Nike Air Jordan shoes and a beach towel depicting the flag of the Dominican Republic.

She told police she went to the pool's bathroom and, when she walked out of the stall, Carpio was standing in front of her. Police said Carpio "placed his hands around her throat and began choking her."

The woman lost consciousness and later awoke at Dr. P. Phillips Hospital, the arrest report shows. Officials said she was not sexually battered.

However, doctors said the violent attack left the victim with "several abrasions on her forearms" and bruises on her neck that showed she had been "severely choked."

On July 2, another woman at the nearby Place on Millenia Boulevard apartments told police a man had raped her and cut her throat. A tipster told police that a person matching the description given by both victims was staying with a friend or relative in an apartment at that complex.

While police questioned Carpio at the apartment, another officer e-mailed the first victim a picture of Carpio along with other suspects. That victim identified Carpio as the man who had attacked her in June.

Carpio was arrested and booked into the Orange County Jail.

Check out the front page of the Orlando Sentinel this morning. There is a photo of this rapist....interesting look. Mall of the Millenia area....

 

[rd_jfc]

what's the chances they will actually keep this guy locked up this time? I am so sick and tired of these people released over and over to terrorize, rape, and murder women.

rd

 

[Dejasade]

Do they DNA from her car that the POI was driving? Does anyone know? Maybe they can compare it to this guy...

 

[rd_jfc]

I know I'm in the minority, but I do not believe they have DNA of the suspect. That was based on one vague sentence from a Fox news article.

rd

 

[Myserty64]

rd jfc is pretty much on the money.
This was posted here around 18 months ago:

WRIGHT: Unfortunately in our case at this time, we don`t have anything that we could enter into a database who would give us a hit as that case probably was.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: So you have no DNA from the car?

WRIGHT: At this time we don`t have -- the DNA that we have is not enough for a profile at this time. However, with scientific advancements, you never know, so we hold on to all the evidence that we pull out of the car.

For ages we were led to believe the evidence from JK's car included a partial print and DNA.
It seems the print doesn't exist.
There has to be questions over the DNA they claim to have too.

 

[scadagirl28]

I wanted to thank you for all the hard work you have done enlarging the POI photos. Do you still feel as you did that this was a security officer or someone impersonating one ? Thanks again rd jfc

 

[liz b.]

The scent dog has the POI back at JK's condo complex. There is video, albeit grainy, of him. But no one at Millenium recalls seeing anyone who looks like the POI around 12 :15 - 12:30 that day ? Where did he go ? Unless he was working there, and blended in. jmo

 

[Shin Masamura]

The problem is, no one saw him once he exited camera view. Im sure the distortion of color for his clothes didn't help either..

 

[liz b.]

So LE estimated his height, and he's short. JK is/was 5' 8 ", He probably had to adjust the driver's seat to drive her car. Did he adjust it back to fit with JK's height when he parked it ? is that what he did after he parked, in the 30 seconds that LE said he sat in the vehicle after he parked it ? If he did adjust the seat back, that shows how careful he was, as does the thoroughness he used when wiping the car's interior. I get the strangest feeling that the POI only dealt with the vehicle. As in, his "job" was to wipe the car down, and ditch it at HOTG. jmo

 

[rd_jfc]

I wanted to thank you for all the hard work you have done enlarging the POI photos. Do you still feel as you did that this was a security officer or someone impersonating one ? Thanks again rd jfc

Thanks scadagirl. Every bit of feedback helps. He pretty much matches to a T the uniform of a security company in Hollywwod, FL near where Jennifer had just driven from day before and visited every couple of weeks. He may have been a former security guard at that company. He may have stalked her at her residence and then returned to S. Florida. People keep asking why after she just got back from her trip, well, there's a reason.

My thought is that part of the reason to wear that uniform and holster is to be able to carry an X-26 type stun gun and use it to disable a victim. Who knows what type of thought process these people have but they've been out there doing this stuff. I did the research on the holster and stun gun back in 2007 so what I found was information current to her disappearance.

But the badge in image 3 in section below the face is a deputy sheriff / DoD shape badge which I was told by one security guard is not allowed to be used by security guards. And the uniform is also that of military regulation armed bike patrol. I don't have a picture of it but I read the regs, lost them, and couldn't find them again. But that was the only other organization I could place this uniform of an armed bike security guard.

Not being able to identify the distinctive thigh and belt strapping for the holster bothers me the most though. It's the most distinctive item in the images and yet unidentified it has not helped us a bit to get a clue on this POI.

 

[Connected]

Just curious if anybody thinks the POI is short? I don't personally and that's a personal opinion.

 

[marable]

Just curious if anybody thinks the POI is short? I don't personally and that's a personal opinion.

My own personal opinion is that the POI is about 5'8" to 5'10" tall.....I also think that there is a possibility that the POI is female due to the shoes appearing too large for the feet .

 

[rd_jfc]

My own personal opinion is that the POI is about 5'8" to 5'10" tall.....I also think that there is a possibility that the POI is female due to the shoes appearing too large for the feet .

There is strong lens distortion. Not only the feet but the legs are too large in proportion to the upper body. There is a break in the image of the body where horizontal fence rails go through and the upper body in between two rails appears smaller in proportion to the lower body all the way down including the foot. The visual largeness is not isolated to the shoe.

 

[NapQueen]

Was the color shading/distortion issue taken into account when comparing the uniform to that the uniform of the security company in Hollywood? I found it so odd that the security camera that captured the POI distorted the appearance of how light or dark clothing is. It could certainly impact the analysis here if it hasn't been included yet.

 

[JnRyan]

So LE estimated his height, and he's short. JK is/was 5' 8 ", He probably had to adjust the driver's seat to drive her car. Did he adjust it back to fit with JK's height when he parked it ? is that what he did after he parked, in the 30 seconds that LE said he sat in the vehicle after he parked it ? If he did adjust the seat back, that shows how careful he was, as does the thoroughness he used when wiping the car's interior. I get the strangest feeling that the POI only dealt with the vehicle. As in, his "job" was to wipe the car down, and ditch it at HOTG. jmo

Jennifer was 5'8", but a man 5'8" might have to move the seat forward. I've fitted some men and women to a bicycle frame and in doing that I learned that proportions of women and men are different. With a man and woman of the same height, the woman, generally, would have a shorter torso and arms and longer legs than a man. I've seen a couple who wanted to purchase road bike and the man was 1-2 inches taller, but he needed a 55cm frame and the woman needed a 57cm frame.

 

[rd_jfc]

Was the color shading/distortion issue taken into account when comparing the uniform to that the uniform of the security company in Hollywood? I found it so odd that the security camera that captured the POI distorted the appearance of how light or dark clothing is. It could certainly impact the analysis here if it hasn't been included yet.

The simple fact is is that it wasn't odd. An outdoor 24/7 surveillance camera uses infrared as "light" for night vision. Cheaper models either didn't have a light detector to flip the IR filter in and out of the picture or the flip could be malfunctioning. The result is that IR is seen as well as light during the day saturating the image. I posted side by sides showing what that does to dark clothes. The Orlando police saw this with their own uniforms, yet never made this clear to the public. They seemed not to understand what they were dealing with, telling the public "don't worry about the clothes". As a result of that incompetence, people have talked about nothing but painters and line chefs (i.e. white uniforms) from the beginning.

What I was looking for was a match from head to toe:
- bike helmet
- shirt with LE insignia
- thigh strapped holster
- long pants
- athletic socks
- athletic biking shoes

I searched night after night on bike patrol images for weeks and was coming to the conclusion it possibly didn't exist, or matched the military reg specs for bike patrol that I saw but couldn't find a picture of. Then I found that Hollywood, Florida security company ad and bam! there was the spitting image of the POI uniform in the ad.

They had just lost their license a few months earlier but I didn't try contacting a company personally. I called in two tips to Orlando police, the holster and then later the face in image 3, and thought the Orlado police had enough to identify a possible security uniform and investigate from there, but never got a response that tips were acted upon. That was back in 2007 when action could have led to some results.

I remain open to a substantive analysis that identifies the objects as something else but have never seen an alternate substantive analysis i.e., desciptive analysis of each portion of the POI image.

One irony of this is that Wikipedia article states POI walked away and never looked back, and this is often repeated, but in fact I have the image of his face where he indeed, stopped and looked back at the car he had just parked. I'm glad I spent the time on this that law enforcement doesn't have time to do, but it has had no impact whatsoever in official statements and the case is in the same position as it was when I did this in 2007.

Thanks for your comment.