By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — DNA helped crack a 24-year-old Harlem murder case after the evidence, found under the victim's fingernails and on her body, was recently retested as part of a cold case initiative, prosecutors said.
Steven Carter, 49, was charged with murdering 26-year-old Antoinette Bennett in St. Nicholas Park after allegedly raped her — days before he was set to be released from prison on a gun rap, prosecutors said Wednesday.
"She had been stabbed several times in the face and...strangled," Assistant District Attorney Melissa Mourges said in court on Wednesday, in describing the brutal attack on the East Harlem woman on Nov. 10, 1986.
Carter's DNA was found on the victim's thigh and under her fingernails, Mourges said.
The DA's office cracked the case this year, while re-testing evidence in unsolved cases including Bennett's. Starting last fall, prosecutors began reexamining evidence in more than 3,000 unsolved Manhattan murders that took place since the '70s.
Carter pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Manhattan Supreme Court Wednesday. He is locked up on a gun possession conviction and was set to be released on July 13 until the DA linked him to the murder case.
The suspect was ordered held without bail and Judge Bonnie Witter told prosecutors to turn over to the DNA testing results to his attorney, Lori Cohen.
But Cohen questioned whether the DNA match was sufficient evidence to charge her client with murder.
She said that just because her client's DNA was found on the victim doesn't mean he's responsible for her death.
"What does this scientific evidence actually mean?" Cohen said to reporters outside the courtroom.
She said that Carter didn't know the victim and denies involvement in the crime.
Carter is due back in court on Aug. 9.
