Inmate linked by DNA to stabbing death of Yonkers woman is convicted of murder

A Virginia inmate linked by DNA to the brutal stabbing death of a Yonkers woman 13 years ago was convicted of murder yesterday in Westchester County Court.

Troy Cartwright, 42, was never a suspect in the Sept. 22, 1993, slaying of Deborah Cobb until last year, when new DNA testing tied him to blood and semen found at the crime scene because his genetic profile was in the national DNA database.

He now faces up to 25 years to life in prison, and his sentence will not begin until he completes his prison time in Virginia, possibly as late as 2029.

The victim's sister, Sharon Cobb, attended every day of the trial and said she was relieved by the verdict.

"He won't hurt anyone else," Cobb said, adding that she thought her sister's trusting nature led to her death. "She just took everybody to be a friend."

Deborah Cobb, a 33-year-old divorced mother of two, was stabbed 14 times, her throat was cut and she suffered dozens of other knife wounds when she would not have sex with Cartwright in her ninth-floor apartment at 160 Warburton Ave. Three friends found her body the next day when they went to check on her because she wasn't answering her phone.

There were no eyewitnesses to the killing and a neighbor gave only a vague description of a suspicious man she saw in the hallway around the time authorities suspected Cobb was killed.

Cartwright was living in Yonkers at the time but soon moved to Virginia. Three months after Cobb was killed, Cartwright shot a man during a robbery in Roanoke. He has been in prison ever since.

His lawyer, Harvey Loeb, suggested that Cartwright and Cobb had a sexual relationship that summer and that during that time he had a wounded hand that was bandaged. So, it was understandable that Cartwright's semen would be found at the scene and that the wound could have bled in the apartment when he was there, Loeb said.

Loeb argued there was ample reasonable doubt of Cartwright's guilt, from the lack of his fingerprints at the scene to evidence another man had sex with Cobb to the fact that police had initially suspected one of Cobb's boyfriends.

Assistant District Attorney Perry Perrone countered that there was a "mountain of DNA evidence ... that only the killer could have left at the scene." He said there was no evidence of an intimate relationship between Cartwright and Cobb, only that they knew each other. He said the defensive wounds on Cobb's hands proved that she fought with her killer and that that was how Cartwright's blood ended up in the apartment.

"She was not giving in and that's what cost her her life," Perrone said in closing arguments Thursday. "Her refusal to give in angered him so much that he cut her throat."

The unsolved slaying was reopened by Yonkers cold case Detective John Geiss five years ago. That led to retesting of the evidence by the Westchester County forensics lab so that results would be compatible with the standards of the national DNA database. Once the match was obtained, Geiss went to speak with Cartwright in Virginia. In their first meeting, Cartwright said he could not remember Cobb but never denied killing her as Geiss confronted him with the evidence.

The jury heard a tape of that interview. But it heard no details of a second interview, when Cartwright suggested he was responsible for Cobb's death and told Geiss he would tell him all about it if brought back to New York. Westchester County Judge Robert DiBella suppressed that statement because, unlike the first interview, Geiss did not give Cartwright his Miranda warnings against self-incrimination.

DiBella scheduled sentencing for Jan. 5.