Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley today joined Middlesex County District Attorney Gerard T. Leone, Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas, and Boston Police detectives at Cambridge Police Headquarters to deliver the following remarks on the arrest of MARCUS A. COLONO (D.O.B. 11/21/77):

“It wasn’t long ago that these two crimes might not have been linked, much less solved and attributed to the same offender. They were two very different attacks with two very different sets of victims in two different jurisdictions. Their most striking commonality was the brutality displayed in each case.

“Two years ago, on Sept. 21, 2008, an unknown offender broke into a residence on Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton and raped two young women inside. The offender left evidence at the scene from which we were able to develop a DNA profile.

“As District Attorney Leone has just described, an unknown offender broke into a residence on Pearl Street in Cambridge on Aug. 26 of this year and attacked two male residents inside, one of them a young child. The offender left evidence at the scene from which a DNA profile was also developed.

“Through a DNA database known as the Combined DNA Index System, we were able to match those two profiles and link them to one offender though what’s known as a ‘case to case hit.’

“Further testing at the Cambridge scene led to fingerprints – and those fingerprints led us to a suspect.

“That we’re here today to announce Marcus Colono’s arrest is a testament to the power of forensic databases like CODIS and the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. But those databases would be useless without the professional criminalists who harness their technology and testify to its accuracy in terms juries can understand.

“And more importantly for us here today, those databases would not have helped us if investigators in Cambridge and Boston hadn’t been so diligent in sharing information across jurisdictions. Colono has been arraigned on the Cambridge charges already and we expect to charge him in Brighton court in the near future as well.

“This is a significant evidentiary development for two cases, but it’s also much more than that. On a personal level, it’s a monumental relief for four victims whose lives were turned upside down when their homes were invaded and their bodies violated by a man no one could identify.

“Today he has a name. He has a face. And he’s behind bars.”

Colono, a Cambridge resident, was identified in part through fingerprints on file for a 1998 marijuana arrest in the City of Boston. He has not yet been formally charged with the Brighton incident, in which two women, then 18 and 23, were raped inside their Commonwealth Avenue apartment at about 8:45 p.m. on Sept. 21, 2008. A warrant charging him wit that offense is expected to be sought in the near future.