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Philadelphia Police Arrest Antonio Rodriguez Minutes After Naming Him as the DNA Match in Three Kensington Killings

Rodriguez, 22, was found in a house on Mutter Street. A state DNA sample taken after a drug-related jail term tied him to the deaths of three women.

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Illustration of a police car on a snowy Philadelphia rowhouse street under an elevated train line at night. Not an actual scene from the case.

Three women were found strangled in Philadelphia's Kensington section in late 2010. On January 17, 2011, police named Antonio Rodriguez as the man DNA linked to all three and arrested him within minutes.

"This confirmation links Antonio Rodriguez to the sexual assaults and murders of Elaine Goldberg, Nicole Piacentini, and Casey Mahoney," Police Captain James Clark told a news conference. Detectives then received a tip that Rodriguez was in a house on the 3300 block of Mutter Street, and he was taken into custody without incident. The DNA match came from a state police database; Rodriguez had no prior sexual offenses but had been jailed on drug-related charges. Goldberg, 21, was found on November 3, 2010; Piacentini, 35, on November 13; and Mahoney, 27, was killed on December 15.

By January 20, Rodriguez, 22, was being held without bail on three counts of murder, and detectives said he had confessed. On August 16, 2012, after a nonjury trial, he was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, rape and related charges and sentenced to three life terms. The Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the sentence in 2014.

The Northeast Times spelled his surname "Rodriquez," while the Pennsylvania Superior Court and other outlets spelled it Rodriguez.

Sources