ALBANY — The father of the University at Albany student who awoke in her dorm room one early morning last October to find a stranger raping her told The Enterprise that the guilty verdict reached on Monday was a great relief to his daughter.

The verdict confirmed, he said, that the truth had been heard and understood.  

The jury in the rape trial of Franklin Casatelli of McKownville deliberated for just over five hours Monday before returning with a verdict at about 5:30 p.m., finding Casatelli guilty on three of five charges.

Casatelli is guilty of two felonies, first-degree rape and second-degree burglary as a sexually motivated felony, and of criminal trespass, a misdemeanor.

Casatelli faces up to 25 years in prison on the rape charge when he is sentenced in Albany County Supreme Court on Feb. 5, 2018 by Judge Thomas Breslin, according to spokeswoman Heather Orth of the Albany County District Attorney’s Office.  

The other felony charge carries a maximum sentence of 15 years, but there is a question, Orth said, about whether that sentence must run concurrently or can run consecutively. Both felony convictions require registration as a sex offender, she said.

There were plea discussions during the case, said Orth, but, “since no agreement could be reached, the case proceeded to trial.”

The lawyer for the prosecution — Shannon Sarfoh, bureau chief of the Special Victims Unit of the Albany County District Attorney’s Office — called many witnesses, including the victim. Casatelli’s lawyers, James Tyner and Bill Roberts, called just one witness: Franklin Casatelli.

Witnesses for the prosecution

Released from prison just 10 days earlier, Casatelli was “a man on a mission,” Sarfoh said in  her closing statement: “He was going to have sex with a woman, any woman, regardless of her consent or lack of consent.”

Among the witnesses for the prosecution were a number of people, most of them students, who had encountered and spoken with Casatelli on campus in the early morning hours of Oct. 23.

A young woman in a dorm near the victim’s testified that, at about 2 or 3 a.m., she picked up a Domino’s Pizza order at the door to her building and was then followed up to her second-floor room by Casatelli — a total stranger — who wanted to “hang out” with her and her roommate. He asked her if she smoked marijuana and told her, “I’m not trying to fuck you or anything.”

A Domino’s driver who had just completed a delivery when he encountered Casatelli testified that Casatelli told him he had cocaine and ecstasy and asked him for a ride to his friend’s house. The driver said no and had started to pull away when he saw the man approaching and talking to another male Domino’s driver; the first driver testified that he re-parked and followed behind his co-worker, to make sure he was all right.

“The guy followed my co-worker all the way to the front door, where he delivered to a woman,” the first driver said. “The kid then followed the woman in, and we left.”

A young woman on the second floor of another dorm had been at her window, talking with a friend who was standing outside when Casatelli happened along. Casatelli engaged her in conversation and wanted to come up and “hang out” with her and “smoke weed,” she said. He told her she looked like his old girlfriend and said to her, “You’re Kristen, you’re Kristen, you were my girlfriend, don’t you remember me?”

A group of three young men — two testified; the other was an international student who had since returned to South Korea — had been outside smoking cigarettes when, one of them testified, Casatelli “randomly approached” them and told them many things: that he lived in McKownville with his mother, that he had graduated in 2011 from Guilderland High School, that he had recently gotten out of prison for selling drugs, that he had gotten a number of tattoos in prison — which he showed them and which they described to police — and that he had just come from the fourth floor of the tower, where he had performed oral sex on a girl who was sleeping and who looked like his old girlfriend — “Carly or something,” one of them recalled on the stand — then had intercourse with her.

By the next morning, police had sent out a mass alert to all students, informing that there had been a report of a sexual assault in Dutch Quad in the early-morning hours. Upon reading it, the young woman who had been followed to her room and her roommate called police, while some of the others who testified were awakened by police at their doors.

Police had compared surveillance footage from cameras located on the outsides of buildings on campus with swipe-card records — the dorms are locked and can only be entered by swiping a student I.D. through a card-reader at the doorways. Police had physical descriptions from many witnesses of a man who turned out to be Casatelli, who had told most of the people he met that night that his name was Frankie.

One of the three young men smoking cigarettes outside testified that, as soon as he saw the investigator at his door that morning, he asked, “Is it about the guy downstairs last night?”

In her closing statement, Sarfoh noted that all the students who met Casatelli early in the morning on Oct. 23 were uncomfortable enough with the encounters that, when Casatelli asked for their names, they had given him fake names — not only the young women, but also the group of male students taking a cigarette break.

Casatelli’s testimony

On the stand, Casatelli said he had been walking home from downtown Albany when he happened upon a house party “in the 700 block of Myrtle Avenue.”

He had stopped and talked with a girl who was among the people standing outside on the porch, drinking. They had talked for about 20 minutes, he said. She then she was going inside to rejoin her friends and that she was leaving but wanted to hang out with him on campus, he testified, and gave him her full name, her telephone number, her Facebook information, the name of her dorm, and her room number.

How did he get to UAlbany from there, prosecutor Sarfoh asked. Casatelli said that he had gotten into “a car.”

Whose car, Sarfoh asked on cross-examination. “Somebody I don’t know, somebody on the street,” he replied, without giving any further details.

Casatelli said he made his way from the party to UAlbany, where he did not go straight to the young woman’s room but encountered and spoke with a number of people first. He acknowledged meeting all of the people who testified about having talked with him, but said he was just being friendly.

When he eventually did go to the accuser’s fourth-floor room in the tower, he knocked softly, and waited a couple of minutes before she opened the door and let him in, he testitifed.

In his version of events, she led him by the hand to her bedroom within the suite, where they got onto her bed and kissed for a few minutes before she made physical gestures encouraging him to perform oral sex on her, which he did, bringing her to orgasm. They were then having intercourse when he accidentally called her by his old girlfriend’s name, Kaylee, and that was when she said she couldn’t do this, she had a boyfriend, and she didn’t know him.

He said he “disclosed to her then that I didn’t go to UAlbany and I had just gotten released from prison.” He left at her insistence, he said, but she never mentioned calling police.

Same evidence, different views

Sarfoh later told the jury, in her closing statement, that the detail about the party having been held in “the 700 block of Myrtle Avenue” was contained in the discovery information and that, when Casatelli said this, it sounded as if he were quoting from a police report; at the same time, she told the jury that it was his right to view all of the evidence against him prior to his trial.

Tyner told the jury, in his closing statement, that, once Casatelli decided to head to the room of the woman he met at the party earlier, “He goes directly to the fourth floor. He doesn’t go to the first floor or the second floor, and knock on a bunch of doors.” Casatelli testified that he took the elevator straight to the fourth floor.

There are no cameras inside the dormitory hallways, but only on the outside of the buildings, the jury heard during Sarfoh’s closing statement, so no one knows whether Casatelli may have stopped at different floors and tried different door handles until he found one that was unlocked — the victim’s room, which was the first room off the stairwell on the fourth floor.

Tyner emphasized that, after leaving the accuser’s room, Casatelli didn’t leave campus right away; he stood around talking outside with the group of young men who were smoking cigarettes; surveillance video as well as testimony from the young men confirm this.

Sarfoh said, in her closing statement, while showing the jury surveillance footage, that Casatelli had been trying to get inside a building in the vicinity, but had failed to do so, and that he spoke to the young men in an effort to “blend in.” When he saw a police officer walk by, toward the tower, he went over to look and asked the young men what they thought the officer was doing there, and left right afterward.

Tyner said in his closing statement that police never dusted the handles of the dormitory’s room doors, but that if they had tested the door of the accuser’s room, they would have found that Casatelli’s fingerprints and his touch DNA were not on the doorknob, because [the accuser] knew exactly what she was doing when she opened that door.”  

Assistant Chief Aran Mull of the University Police told The Enterprise on Monday afternoon, before the verdict was announced, that the reason there are no cameras inside the dormitory hallways is for the sake of student privacy. He said that the exterior cameras, coupled with the swipe-card system, have been “incredibly effective” in helping police resolve issues inside the residence halls and that the current system “gives us really good information without compromising privacy.”

He said also that surfaces such as door handles typically have hundreds of fingerprints on them and that police had decided to move ahead with the case without that because the rest of the evidence they had was compelling.

The defense attorney said, if it were really a rape, and not pre-planned, consensual sex that the accuser had later decided was a bad idea, the accuser would have called out to her roommate, sleeping just feet away in the next bed, for help. She would have called 911 immediately, instead of replying to a text she had just received from a friend from back home, writing, “I need you. I just woke up to someone on me” and taking time to talk with that friend on the phone. She would have screamed, he said.

When the accuser called 9-1-1 about five minutes after Casatelli left her room, she was crying softly and her voice was a little breathless. She gave her location and a description of her attacker and of what had happened; she told the dispatcher that the man had short, black hair, a buzzcut, maybe a gray top, jeans, and blue boxers.

“He kept asking for my name, but I wouldn’t give it to him,” she told the dispatcher. She was assured that officers were on the way.

At some point during the call, her roommate awoke and soon began crying and wailing. For the rest of the call, the accuser consoled her roommate, saying, “Don’t worry, I’m right here, it’s OK, I’m right here,” and “It’s not your fault, it’s nobody’s fault. It’s OK.”

The defense argued that the accuser was not as upset during the 9-1-1 call as a rape victim should normally be. The prosecution said the accuser is a capable young woman who was able to stay composed despite the situation and who was concerned that night not only for herself but also for her roommate.

Jay Caponera, a forensic scientist and DNA expert with the New York State Police Lab, said that DNA retrieved from the crotch of the victim’s underwear showed a composite result that included a full DNA profile that was “a match” with Franklin Casatelli, as well as with anyone in his male paternal line, such as his father or grandfather.

In her closing statement, Sarfoh said that, given the DNA match to Casatelli, the defense had no choice but to claim that the sex was consensual.

The victim’s testimony

Sarfoh said in both her opening and closing statements that the victim attended an off-campus house party with her roommate and one other friend — a party to welcome new members of an a cappella singing group — and that she had drunk alcohol at the party.

She had thrown up once at the party and once after getting off the busy back to campus, which had made her feel less nauseated, Sarfoh said; she had then placed a bag near her bed in case she threw up again and had gone to sleep.

The victim said on the stand that she was “not fully awake” when she felt “that someone is inside me” and “something bad is happening,” the court transcript says.

The victim realized, she testified, that someone was on top of her, and she told him, “Look stop, like get off.”

He then replied, “Oh, can I at least finish? I thought you were having a good time.”

She repeated no and told him to get off, and he did, she said.

At this point, she said, he was sitting on her bed, saying things like, “I thought you were having a good time, I’m sorry,” and “I just got out of prison, my ex-girlfriend used to live here, I thought you were my ex-girlfriend, you looked just like her, you’re very beautiful, like just repeating those things over and over again.”

She kept asking him to leave, she said, and he kept asking if he could stay a little while and lie with her.

She took out her cell phone, she said, which she thinks was under her pillow, and saw that, soon before she awoke, her “best friend from home” had texted her; she texted that young woman back, asking her for help.

She didn’t want to call anyone; she was just “texting trying to silently get help,” she said on the stand. Meanwhile, she was also trying not to look at him, because she was “too scared to look at his face.” She said she was not yelling because, “I was trying to just stay calm and he just got out of prison and I didn’t know if he was going to hurt me, so I never yelled or anything.”

Finally he agreed to leave, put on his clothes and started toward the door, asking her several times, “Please don’t call the cops,” she said.

She said that, when he left, the suite door remained unlocked, because it could only be locked, even from the inside, with a suite or a bedroom key. She said she went back into her bedroom and locked that door; it could be locked without a key.

She noted, in her testimony, that she moved to a different dormitory that same day.

She testified that she had never seen Casatelli before she awoke that night.

Verdict brings relief

The father of the victim told The Enterprise Tuesday morning that, for his daughter, “It was a very large weight off her shoulders.”

She, along with her parents and other family members, was in the courtroom to hear the verdict, he said, and “it was a very emotional moment for her.”

He called the verdict verification that the truth was told and heard, and said that he appreciated the jury and had “a huge, huge feeling of gratitude.”

His first thought was, he said, that justice will be served.

Now, the father said, referring to Casatelli, “So, now he can stay where he belongs, for, hopefully, a long time.”