Mariana Ramos
After years on the run, a former Lisle man will spend the rest of his life in prison for the 1999 rape of an elderly Lisle woman.
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Roberto Noyola-Espinal, 41, was sentenced Friday to 100 years in prison after being convicted in June of six counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault and one count of home invasion, thanks to a DNA sample he gave years after the crime.
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Early in the morning on Feb. 7, 1999, Noyola-Espinal approached a 63-year-old woman’s Lisle apartment and knocked on her patio door, prosecutors said. Thinking it was a friend, she began to open the door.
Once she realized she did not know the person, the woman tried to close the door, but it was too late.
DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin says investigators collected DNA evidence and entered it into a federal database. But it didn’t match any DNA profile in the system.
The woman was beaten and left bleeding from a cut on her chin, he also left wounds on her face and shoulder. Eventually she made her way across the hall to the apartment of a longtime friend, who testified that she helped call 911 and attempted to comfort the victim.
Noyola-Espinal fled to Chicago and then to Kentucky and Mexico before being incarcerated in Texas in 2013 when he tried to re-enter the U.S. illegally from Mexico.
In October 2013, a national DNA database matched Noyola-Espinal’s DNA collected at the scene of the crime to a sample taken from him during his Texas incarceration.
On Feb. 27, 2014, Noyola-Espinal was extradited from Texas and returned to DuPage County to face the charges. He has been held on $1 million bail since that time.
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The victim was still alive when Noyola-Espinal was arrested, but she died in January 2015 at the age of 78.
Noyola-Espinal must serve 85 percent of his sentence before being eligible for parole.
