POMPANO BEACH, FL (Boca Post) (Copyright © 2025) — Sixteen years after a brutal home invasion and sexual battery shocked a Pompano Beach neighborhood, Broward Sheriff’s Office detectives say they’ve found the man responsible.
The attack happened around 3:30 a.m. on June 19, 2009. A 36-year-old mother was asleep in her bedroom with two of her children when a man broke into their home, held her at gunpoint, and sexually assaulted her. The children slept through the ordeal and were unharmed, investigators said.
Deputies responded to the 600 block of Northwest Ninth Avenue and found the front door open. Evidence showed the intruder broke in through a window in an unoccupied bedroom, confronted the victim, and fled after taking her purse. Detectives said he left one critical piece of evidence behind — semen, later collected by crime scene investigators.
The woman told detectives her attacker wore a dark mask and gloves and had a strong body odor. At the time, the Broward Sheriff’s Office Crime Lab developed a DNA profile from the evidence, but no match could be found. Despite years of work, the case went cold.
That changed this year. Using new DNA technology, BSO’s Cold Case Unit reexamined the biological evidence. In April 2025, analysts determined the sample came from a single male contributor. Investigators then asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to run a familial DNA search — a process that looks for close relatives of possible suspects in the state’s DNA database.
The results pointed to a known offender whose genetic profile suggested a family link to the attacker. That lead brought detectives to 63-year-old Wisler Marcellus.
According to BSO, Marcellus had recently traveled to Haiti. Detectives learned he was due to return to South Florida in late October. When he landed at Miami International Airport on October 20, investigators served a DNA search warrant. The swabs taken from Marcellus were sent to the BSO Crime Lab, which later confirmed his DNA matched the profile recovered from the 2009 scene.
On October 28, BSO’s Violence Intervention Proactive Enforcement Response (V.I.P.E.R.) team took Marcellus into custody and booked him into the Broward County Main Jail. He faces one count of sexual battery with a weapon and one count of armed burglary.
For BSO’s Cold Case Unit, the arrest closes a painful chapter in one of the county’s longest-running unsolved cases.
After years of waiting, detectives say the victim can finally know that justice is being served.
Marcellus is currently being held at the BSO jail on the following charges:
- SEXUAL BATTERY WITH A WEAPON VICTIM OVER 12 YEARS OLD
- ARMED BURGLARY
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