Man admits he attacked women on the Esplanade for years

Alejandro Done, 49, of the South End, today admitted he's been sexually attacking women on the Esplanade since at least 2006, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Done, scheduled for sentencing on July 18, is already serving a sentence of 10 to 12 years out of Middlesex County for raping a woman he'd picked up in his Uber car on Tremont Street in Boston in 2014. A match between DNA evidence collected in that case and in the Esplanade cases gave investigators the link they needed to begin collecting evidences against him for the Esplanade attacks, prosecutors say.

At a hearing in Suffolk Superior Court today, Done pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated rape, one count of rape, one count of assault with intent to rape, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of armed robbery for attacks on three women on the Esplanade in 2006, 2007 and 2010 - for which authorities had long warned women about walking on the Esplanade alone late at night, often with the artist's sketch seen above. Prosecutors had evidence of a fourth attack, but the victim in that case returned to her native country shortly after the assault, the DA's office reports.

Prosecutors will seek a lengthy sentence, the DA's office reports:

Had the case proceeded to trial, Assistant District Attorneys Amy Martin and David Deakin would have introduced evidence and testimony proving that Done was the unknown assailant who attacked women in Boston during late-night sexual assaults during the summer months of 2006, 2007, and 2010. The assaults were investigated by the Suffolk County State Police Detective Unit, Boston Police Sexual Assault Unit, and the chief of the DA’s Family Protection and Sexual Assault Bureau.

Despite repeated efforts to identify the assailant through police sketches, computer-assisted composite images, appeals for witnesses, and plainclothes surveillance, he remained at large until 2015. That year, a DNA profile from one of the assaults matched Done’s DNA profile, which had been uploaded to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, in the course of a Middlesex County investigation.