In the early 1980s, a series of rapes and assaults were committed in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. As pressure mounted to solve the crimes, the media referred to the attacker as the “Delaware Park rapist.”
On July 8, 1983, at 7 a.m., a 33-year-old woman was attacked and raped near an 18-foot tall bronze replication of Michelangelo’s David. The woman said a man had put a gun to her head as she was jogging, forced her off the path, and then raped her.
Later that day, William Buyers, the Buffalo commissioner of human resources, told the police that he saw a man acting strangely near the statue on the day before the woman was attacked. Buyers’s description of the man was similar to the description given by the victim, who said the man was white, wore jogging shorts, and weighed about 150 to 160 pounds.
Several months later, Buyers believed he saw the same man in a restaurant on Delaware Avenue, but lost sight of the man when he tried to follow him to his car to get a license plate number.
On September 11, 1985, Buyers saw the man again in the same restaurant. This time, Buyers was able to follow him to a car and got a license plate number. The number was tracked to 29-year-old Anthony Capozzi.
The police created a photographic lineup that included Capozzi’s photograph. Over the next two days, numerous rape victims were brought to the police station. The woman who was raped on July 8, 1983, identified him as her attacker. Two other women also identified Capozzi as the man who raped them–a 20-year-old woman who was raped at 5 p.m. on December 14, 1983 and a 22-year-old woman who was raped at about 10 p.m. on April 2, 1984.
Police arrested Capozzi on September 13, 1985, and he was charged with numerous counts of first-degree rape, sodomy, and criminal possession of a weapon.
Prior to trial, Capozzi was examined to determine whether he was competent to stand trial. Although diagnosed with schizophrenia, Capozzi was ruled competent. The court denied a defense motion to present evidence of other rapes that had been committed at times when Capozzi had an alibi, and that two more rapes had occurred after he was arrested.
Capozzi went to trial in Erie County Supreme Court in February 1987. The three women identified him as their attacker, although one of them–the victim of the December 14, 1983 rape–admitted she had initially identified someone other than Capozzi, and that her attacker had quickly covered her eyes with a hat before raping her.
Buyers testified that he saw Capozzi near the statue of David the day before the July 8, 1984 attack, and that Capozzi was acting suspiciously, looking around and over his shoulder.
The defense noted that none of the victims had mentioned anything about a scar on the face of their attacker. Capozzi had a distinctive three-inch scar above his left eyebrow resulting from an accident in 1982. The defense presented medical records showing that during 1983 and 1984, Capozzi’s weight ranged from 200 to 220 pounds, 40 to 60 pounds heavier than the descriptions given by the victims.
Capozzi’s parents, Albert and Mary, and his sister, Pamela, testified that Capozzi never owned shorts because he was sensitive about his extensive body hair.
Capozzi did not testify.
On April 6, 1987, the jury convicted Capozzi of two counts of first-degree rape and two counts of sodomy for the April 2, 1984 rape and the July 8, 1984 rape. He was acquitted of the 1983 attack.
On April 21, 1987, Supreme Court Justice Vincent Doyle sentenced Capozzi to 16 2/3 to 50 years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed. Asked if he had anything to say, Capozzi declared, “I never did these crimes and I’m innocent.”
In July 1989, the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, Fourth Department, upheld Capozzi’s convictions and sentence.
In 1990, Linda Yalem, a student at the University of Buffalo was raped and killed along the Ellicott Creek Bike path. In November 1992, Majane Mazur was murdered near the Amtrak rail line in downtown Buffalo. In 2006, Joan Diver, a nurse, was strangled to death on a bike path in Newstead, New York, northeast of Buffalo.
As a result, a law-enforcement task force was created and dubbed the “Bike Path Task Force.” It was composed of officers in the Erie County Sheriff’s Office as well as the New York State Police, the Buffalo Police Department, the Amherst Police Department, and the FBI.
As the officers reviewed unsolved cases, they came upon a Delaware Park rape committed on April 14, 1981. The victim had reported to police that three days after the attack, she saw a man she believed was her attacker and followed him to his car. She took down the license plate number. Police traced the number to William Caraballo, who told police that the car had not been driven in more than a month because it was not insured. The information was considered a dead end.
As part of the task force efforts, Caraballo was tracked down in North Carolina, where he had moved. He admitted that he had lied to the police in 1981. In fact, he said, the car was being driven at the time by his nephew, Altemio Sanchez.
In January 2007, detectives surveilling Sanchez confiscated drinking glasses from Sanchez’s table after he left a restaurant in Amherst. His DNA profile was linked to the murders of Yalem, Mazur and Diver, as well as the 1981 rape.
The investigators began focusing on other rapes, including the ones for which Capozzi was still serving time in prison. They visited Capozzi in Attica Correctional Facility. Capozzi insisted he was innocent.
A search for the evidence in Capozzi’s two cases was initially unsuccessful. However, in March 2007, slides from the case were found in a cabinet at the Erie County Medical Center. When the slides were submitted for DNA testing, Sanchez’s DNA profile was identified. Capozzi was excluded.
His attorney filed a motion to vacate the convictions based on the test results.
On April 2, 2007, Capozzi’s convictions were vacated, the charges were dismissed, and he was released.
In 2010, Capozzi received $4.25 million in compensation from the State of New York.
Sanchez was convicted of three murders and sentenced to life in prison. He could not be prosecuted for the rapes because the statute of limitations had expired. Sanchez died in prison in 2023.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 07-22-2026
