Worcester Man Charged With Murder of Vanessa Marcotte

Sunday, April 16, 2017

GoLocalWorcester News Team

Vanessa Marcotte PHOTO: instagram

A Worcester man has been arrested and charged with the August 7 murder of Vanessa Marcotte, Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. announced.

Angelo Colon-Ortiz was arrested on Friday by State Police Detectives and charged with aggravated assault and battery and assault with attempt to rape. Early added that he expects more charges to be added.

“We got him,” Early said during a press conference on Saturday to announce that the DNA of Colon-Ortiz had matched the samples found on the hands of Marcotte.

Colon-Ortiz is being held on $10 million bail and will be arraigned Tuesday in Leominster District Court.

The Investigation

Marcotte, 27, had worked for Google in New York City. She was in Princeton visiting her family last August. She had been out for a walk the afternoon of August 7 and was reported missing when she did not return

Investigators received more than 1,300 tips from the public, but the break in the case came when an alert trooper with the State Police Detective Unit assigned to the Worcester County District Attorney's office recently spotted a dark SUV in Worcester driven by a man matching a description of the suspect. Not finding a piece of paper, the trooper wrote the license plate number down on his hand and followed up.

He later went to the suspect’s home and where suspect provided the DNA that led to the match.