Exclusive | Fiancée of accused serial Boston rapist Matthew Nilo still standing by him as he appears for key hearing 3 years after arrest
She’s still standing by her man.
The fiancée of a New Jersey lawyer arrested in 2023 for eight rapes and sexual assaults in Boston nearly 20 years ago appeared in court yet again to support her betrothed for a crucial evidentiary hearing that could make or break the case against him.
The case has dragged on for more than three years while Matthew Nilo, 35, remains free on bail. Since the beginning, he has fought the DNA evidence used to build the case against him.
And fiancée Laura Griffin was at Monday’s hearing — as she has been throughout the legal battle.
Griffin’s hair was in a no-nonsense updo and clad in dark pants and an unbuttoned blazer with a light blue blouse underneath, holding a gray purse and an umbrella — and a large rock on her finger, but no wedding ring yet.
Nilo, in a dark blue suit and red tie, was in Suffolk County Superior Court Monday — his first scheduled court appearance since February — as his lawyers sought to suppress evidence gathered in an elaborate DNA collecting process that linked him to the attacks against eight women between 2007 and 2008.
He was arrested in 2023 at his home in Weehawken, N.J., just two weeks after he got engaged to Griffin, who previously showed up at a hearing in a Hudson County courtroom for his extradition hearing.
Nilo, who posted $500,000 bail and has been free with an ankle monitor since then, landed on cops’ radar as a suspect in three assaults in the affluent Charlestown neighborhood when the case was reopened in October 2022.
At that time, the Boston police requested help from the FBI, which received approval to utilize investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) techniques, for which investigators upload partial samples of a person’s DNA to commercial genealogy services to help identify potential relatives, court documents show.
Using a sample recovered from an August 2007 rape kit, the bureau began piecing together a family tree for Nilo limb by limb using information gathered from sites including FamilyTreeDNA, GEDMatch Pro and MyHeritage.com, according to court docs.
Investigators found several relatives of Nilo in the process, who agreed to have their DNA tested so it could be cross-referenced, according to prosecutors.
Upon completion of the family tree, investigators identified Nilo as the “likely contributor of the DNA recovered from the August 2007 rape.”
In April 2023, FBI agents tailed Nilo from his home to the Oscar Wilde bar on W. 27th Street in Manhattan and observed him partake in a meal and several alcoholic beverages over a four-hour period.
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Over the course of the evening, agents obtained five glasses and a utensil Nilo had used after waitstaff cleared the items from his table.
The items were sent to the Boston Police Crime Lab for genetic analysis, which found Nilo’s DNA profile was a match to the DNA profile obtained from the three rapes in Charlestown, court documents show.
However Nilo’s lawyers argue the warrantless seizure of his dinnerware and search of his bodily fluids without his consent or knowledge constituted violations of his 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th Amendment rights and are moving to suppress any DNA evidence collected as a result of the investigation.
“The level of intrusion exercised by the government outweighed any alleged legitimate governmental interests advanced by the warrantless search,” his legal team argues in a Jan. 7 affidavit.
However prosecutors countered that the items were removed by restaurant staff “in the ordinary course of business” and that they were “no longer in defendant’s possession or control at the time agents obtained them.”
Nilo faces two separate indictments stemming from two separate alleged spates of sexual assaults.
Monday’s hearing includes the first indictment, brought in June 2023, and involving four attacks against four women in Charlestown.
The charges in the case include three counts of aggravated rape, two counts of kidnapping, one count of assault with intent to rape and a count of indecent assault and battery.
Nilo was hit with a second indictment soon after the first, including charges involving five additional alleged attacks against four women in the North End of Boston.
Charges in the second indictment include one count of rape, one count of aggravated rape and three counts of assault with intent to rape.
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