Boston serial rape suspect Matthew Nilo’s defense says DNA swab would be ‘inappropriate’

FIRST ON FOX – Matthew Nilo returned to a Boston court Thursday as his defense said it would be “inappropriate” to take a DNA swab from the New Jersey-based lawyer, who has been accused of sexually assaulting or raping at least eight women in the Boston area in 2007 and 2008.

Nilo appeared in Suffolk County court with his fiancée on Thursday for a motion hearing. After more than 16 years, authorities in March linked his DNA to evidence found at the various crime scenes in Boston and Charlestown, where Nilo, now 35, is accused of assaulting eight women between 2007 and 2008, when he would have been 19 or 20 years old.

“The defense still owes us a lot of information. And our position is: we should … have all that information before the courthouse makes a ruling on conducting an invasive vehicle swab of our client,” Nilo’s attorney, Joseph Cataldo, told Fox News Digital of Thursday’s hearing, referring to a DNA sample that the Commonwealth wants to take directly from the suspect’s mouth. “We think it’s inappropriate now to conduct such a search.”

Cataldo argued that the evidence the state is “relying upon is tainted by the illegal search in the first place, which was conducted in New York” with “the warrantless search and seizure of tableware and DNA.”

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FBI Boston Special Agent In Charge Joe Bonavolonta said in May that Nilo’s arrest was “the direct result of the FBI’s use of investigative genetic genealogy,” which he described as “a unique method used to generate new leads in unsolved sex assaults, homicides and other violent crimes.”

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Nilo was initially charged in May with three counts of aggravated rape, two counts of kidnapping, one count of assault with intent to rape and one count of indecent assault and battery. 

In July, a Suffolk County, Massachusetts grand jury indicted Nilo on seven additional charges, including one count of rape, one count of aggravated rape, three counts of assault with intent to rape and two counts of indecent assault and battery.

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“The commonwealth is claiming that they have some connection between Mr. Nilo and DNA from 15 years ago, but that evidence was presumably taken from tableware in New York without a warrant and searching it for DNA,” Cataldo said, adding that the alleged DNA evidence was “taken without his knowledge or consent or, most importantly, without a warrant.”

“We need that information before we start forcing Mr. Nilo to start undergoing bodily searches,” the attorney said.

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In the years after 2008, Nilo went on to get his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and worked two years as a paralegal before moving on to the University of San Francisco School of Law. From there, Nilo worked at the Clyde & Co. law firm in San Francisco, Atheria Law in New York City and finally at Cowbell Cyber in New York, according to his LinkedIn page.

The suspect apparently got engaged to his fiancee, who has appeared at every one of Nilo’s hearings so far, just weeks before his arrest, according to his social media.

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Nilo was fitted for a GPS monitor and released on $500,000 bail from the Suffolk County Jail on June 15 following his arraignment and a bail hearing. 

One of his accusers, Lori Pinkham, told reporters on June 15 before his release that she feared Nilo could be a danger to the community if he was allowed out on bail.

Pinkham, who said she was working as a bar manager in Cambridge at the time of the 2007 attack, alleged that Nilo forced her into a vehicle at gunpoint near Government Center in downtown Boston. 

Cataldo questioned what he described as “the suspicious nature in which the DNA was recovered, but we’ll get to that in due course” in comments to reporters at the Suffolk County Superior Court on June 15.