The New Jersey lawyer charged in a 15-year-old Boston rape spree was lured to the scene of his arrest with his fiancée by a bogus package report, court documents indicate.
Matthew Nilo, 35, was arrested in the lobby of his Weehawken apartment building on May 30 in front of his new fiancée, Laura Griffin, NBC Boston reported, citing a warrant filed in court.
The FBI and police lured the pair to the lobby by having the front desk call their apartment to say that an oversize package had been delivered for them, the outlet said.
Nilo pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated rape, kidnapping, assault with attempt to rape and indecent assault and battery in Suffolk Superior Court on Monday.
Griffin — who was clutching rosary beads — was present at the proceedings.
Since-deleted social media posts indicated that Nilo, who previously lived in Boston’s North End, proposed to Griffin shortly before he was taken into custody for a disturbing series of rapes in the city’s Terminal Street area between August 2007 and December 2008.
At the time of the assaults, Nilo was between 19 and 20 years old, and may have been in town on break from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree.
The four alleged victims — who ranged in age from 23 to 44 at the time of the assaults — have not been publicly identified.
At a press conference last week, investigators confirmed they identified the attorney using genetic genealogy — which combines DNA technology with historical record searches to find new suspects in cold cases — to link him to the unsolved spree.
Prosecutors allege that Nilo drove three women to a remote part of Boston after offering them rides home.
In all three cases, he allegedly told the women he had a weapon before sexually assaulting them.
He reportedly flashed a knife at one encounter, and showed the victim a gun at another, NBC Boston said.
All three willingly accepted rides from Nilo, though at least one thought he was a taxi driver, prosecutors explained.
In the fourth case, Nilo allegedly tackled a woman who was jogging on Terminal Street and sexually assaulted her with his hand.
The woman eventually fought him off, though he repeatedly screamed, “I have a gun.”
After police reopened the case last year, FBI agents obtained utensils and drinking glasses Nilo used at a corporate event, a court filing said.
Genetic material from one of the glasses was subsequently matched to the suspect profile.
At the time of his arrest, Nilo was a cyber claims attorney for the Cowbell insurance firm.
His employment was suspended pending the ongoing rape investigation.
After pleading not guilty on Tuesday, Nilo was ordered held on $500,000 bail. If he posts bail, he is required to submit to GPS monitoring and stay away from both the alleged victims and Terminal Street.
He is due back in court in July, with a trial set for June 2024.
