East Bronx detectives finally got their man.
Nestor (Frankie) Marrero, on the lam after failing to show up for a court date last summer on a string of charges involving home invasion burglaries in the east Bronx, was finally nabbed.
Police had feared he ran away to the Dominican Republic, where extradition laws are lax.
Instead, he was nabbed right in the Bronx, arrested for shoplifting at the Home Depot on Gun Hill Road in Allerton.
“They ran him through the computer and BINGO!” said Detective Bobby Rogers of the 45th Precinct, the original case officer, “he had two outstanding warrants.”
Marrero was arraigned on Friday, Feb. 14 on a grand jury indictment charging him with several burglaries, grand larcency and petit larcenies mostly involving elderly victims in Morris Park, City Island and other nearby neighborhoods.
This time, a judge ordered him held on $10,000 cash bail or bond.
The 39-year-old career criminal had earlier been released twice without bail after being arrested for the east Bronx burglaries, but failed to show up for an August 12 court hearing.
Police said the intmidating 6-foot-5, 350 pound former area window company employe used the repairman ruse to gain entry to the homes of elderly victims to rip them off while they weren’t looking.
Marrero had been fired from the window company and either remembered some of his jobs or took work slips with him “so he had an excuse to enter the homes, supposedly to check on the windows,” said Detective Rogers.
A neighborhood fixture around Morris Park and Throggs Neck, Marrero was arrested three times in June and August, charged with burglarizing local homes – twice with elderly or handicapped victims inside.
But at his two arraignments, judges released him without bail, despite Marrero being a predicate felon and prosecutors asking for high bail.
Police said Marrero failed to show up in court for a scheduled hearing on Aug. 12, with a new arrest warrant awaiting him for yet another burglary.
After an earlier story in the Bronx Times Reporter, yet another victim, who recognized Marrero’s mug shot in the paper, came forward.
Detective Rogers rushed the victim straight into the grand jury after interviewing him at his home, police said, with the jury issuing a felony indictment on the new burglary charge.
Rogers then went to court on Aug. 12 with the new arrest warrant. But when Marrero failed to show up, the judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest for failing to appear.
Marrero’s landlord on Sampson Street told the detective at the time that Marrero had moved to the Dominican Republic with his wife, still owing him over $5,000 in unpaid rent.
