Convicted child rapist captured in Caribbean
Bay State man faces extradition
German Reyes disappeared in October 2006, just hours before an Essex jury convicted him of raping his daughter. On Monday, after a two-year international manhunt, federal marshals captured him near a relative's home in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, State Police said yesterday.
Authorities are now trying to extradite the 46-year-old former Lawrence and Methuen man, who was convicted in absentia of raping a child, indecent assault and battery on a person over 14, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, incest, and three counts each of indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or under.
"This criminal may have thought he escaped justice, but he thought wrong," said Colonel Mark F. Delaney, superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police. "This truly was a cooperative effort that spanned not only different agencies, but different countries."
Prosecutors said Reyes assaulted his daughter between 1998 and 1999, while she was 11 and 12 years old and living with Reyes in Lawrence, and between 2003 and 2005, while she was living with him in Methuen.
The State Police Violent Fugitive Apprehension Section began searching for Reyes soon after he fled. Troopers tracked him to New York City, but he boarded a flight to the Dominican Republic before they could arrest him.
Massachusetts authorities contacted the US Department of Justice, which issued a warrant. State Police contacted US deputy marshals assigned to the US embassy in the Dominican Republic and asked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to look for Reyes.
In January, ICE agents stopped Reyes's girlfriend as she entered the United States.
State Police officials declined to release her name or comment on whether she helped them locate him.
On Monday afternoon, the marshals learned that Reyes would be visiting his sister's house in Sector Italia, a Santo Domingo neighborhood. With assistance from the Dominican Dirección Nacional de Control de Drogas, the marshals found Reyes near the house and took him into custody.
David Procopio, a State Police spokesman, declined to say how marshals located Reyes.
"As for tactics and techniques we use in tracking fugitives, we do not discuss those in any detail for obvious strategic reasons," Procopio wrote in an e-mail. "All I can say is that our Violent Fugitive Apprehension Section troopers work closely with US marshals to gather information in a variety of ways. It is painstaking work."
Reyes was being held in the Dominican Republic yesterday pending extradition, which could take weeks.
He will be sentenced in Lawrence when he returns.
"The arrest of this child rapist came as the result of tenacious investigative work," Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett said in a statement.
Lawrence Police Chief John J. Romero said, "Sometimes it takes time, but the important thing is we found him, and he's going to come back and face his crimes."
