Two court cases with significant Marquette ties will come to trial later this month in the Milwaukee County Circuit Court and the Waukesha County Circuit Court.
Sandy Farrior
Sandy Farrior, the 28-year-old Chicago man charged with sexually assaulting a 21-year-old Marquette graduate student in 1994, will face jury trial May 15.
Farrior is charged with four counts of first-degree sexual assault and one count of second-degree sexual assault of a child, according to Assistant District Attorney Paul Tiffin, who is prosecuting the case.
Tiffin said the former graduate student is expected to testify at the trial.
"She'll testify," Tiffin said. "She has to, or else there's not a case."
Tiffin said DNA evidence played a significant role in the case.
"If we did not have DNA we would not have caught him," he said.
Indeed, matching samples of Farrior's DNA to a relatively new DNA bank helped link him to the crime, which had become a cold case. Farrior's DNA was matched to a piece of semen-stained upholstery from the Marquette student's car in December 2004.
The second-degree sexual assault of a child is separate from the 1994 case, but also happened in Milwaukee County, Tiffin said.
At Milwaukee Circuit Court Oct. 27, 2005, Farrior pleaded not guilty to the five charges and waived his rights to a preliminary hearing.
Farrior was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service in Chicago and extradited to Wisconsin on Sept. 29, 2005. He could face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each charge, according to Tiffin.
According to court documents, Farrior's attorney, Theodore Bryant Nanz, withdrew from the case Jan. 11.
Tiffin said he believes the action stemmed from a breakdown of communication between Nanz and Farrior.
Neither Bryant Nanz nor Farrior's current defense attorney, Scott Anderson, responded to requests for comment.
Antony Periathamby
In Waukesha County, the case against Antony Periathamby will move forward with a jury trial on May 22, according to court documents.
Periathamby, a research professor in Marquette's School of Dentistry, is charged with a Class D felony of using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.
Periathamby was arrested by the City of Brookfield Police Department on Feb. 27, 2005, after he allegedly tried to meet whom he thought was a 13-year-old girl in a Brookfield Pick 'n Save parking lot to have sex. Periathamby had made contact with the girl over the Internet. In actuality, the "girl" was a child advocate who alerted the police to her planned rendezvous with Periathamby.
His case was set for a jury trial Jan. 30. 2005, during a motion hearing in the Waukesha Circuit Court.
Questions over Periathamby's arrest had been raised when Brookfield police officers testified at an Oct. 24 motion hearing. Periathamby's defense questioned whether the arrest was legal because of technicalities.
Periathamby was employed by the university at the time of his arrest but has not returned to campus since, according to Director of University Communication Brigid O'Brien Miller.