JOI LITTLE - 9 yo - (1988) / Convicted: Boyfriend, Robert Fleming - Bronx, NY

Robert Fleming, monster who murdered, raped 9-year-old and her mother in 1988, finally sent to prison

Prosecutors say Robert Fleming, 47, sodomized and strangled his 26-year-old girlfriend, Selena Cooper, and her 9-year-old daughter, Joi Little, in the their Bronx apartment in February 1988.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Wednesday, September 4, 2013, 3:45 PM
Updated: Thursday, September 5, 2013, 4:23 AM



NEWS12 The Bronx
Robert Fleming, 47, was finally sentenced to two consecutive terms of 25 years to life following the brutal 1988 rape and killing of 26-year-old Selena Cooper and her 9-year-old daughter, Joi Little.

It took 25 years, but a cold-hearted monster who raped and strangled a 9-year-old Bronx girl and her mother was finally sentenced for the gruesome crime.

A judge handed down the maximum penalty — a pair of consecutive 25-to-life terms Wednesday — meaning Robert Fleming, 47, will likely die behind bars.

Fleming, a convicted drug dealer, killed Selena Cooper, 26, and her daughter, Joi Little, in their Morris Heights apartment Feb. 29, 1988, officials said.

“He got what he deserved and it’s finally over,” said Wanda Cooper, 47, Selena’s younger sister.

Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News
Family of the victims leave the Bronx Criminal Courthouse after the sentencing of Robert Flemming for 1987 double homicide. Aunt Bobbie Monroe, left; sister Wanda Cooper, center; and grandmother Phyllis Little, right.

Phyllis Little, Joi Little’s grandmother, raged against the man who killed her granddaughter.
“He’s absolutely crazy. He needs to stay in a psychiatric hospital for the rest of his life,” she said.
The little girl had been placed in the custody of her grandmother because Selena Cooper was addicted to crack, a law enforcement source said.

Little said her granddaughter had permission to spend one night at her mother’s E. 174th St. apartment and that’s why she was there that fateful night.

Florescu Viorel for New York Daily News
Joi Little, 9, was killed by Robert Fleming in Feb. 1988.
RELATED: DETECTIVE: DNA EVIDENCE WAS IN ITS INFANCY IN FLEMING CASE

“She spent Friday night with my son in Queens, she had a recital on Saturday, and then after she went to Selena’s to spend Saturday night with her mom,” Little said.

Little said she went to pick up her granddaughter, and will never forget the grisly scene inside the fifth-floor apartment. The mother and daughter were naked and tied up face-to-face in a blood-soaked bed, the law enforcement source said.

“I found them,” she said. “You know you take that memory with you wherever you go, but sometimes you have to put it in a drawer and close it,” Little said.

Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News
Grandmother Phyllis Little stands with Delby Rodriguez.  Delby is a garage parking lot attendant that became friends with Phyllis during the trial. 

“You never forget . . . all of it takes a toll on you,” Little said,
Fleming, who was dating Cooper at the time of the murders, won’t be eligible for parole until he’s 97.

“There’s finally closure to this crime. You never get over it, you deal with it on a daily basis, but today it was like we got to close a chapter and move on,” said Joi’s father Tyrone Little, 52, breaking down in tears.
Detective Wendell Stradford, of the NYPD Cold Case Squad, was at the sentencing Wednesday and said he was relieved Fleming was finally going to pay for the crime. He worked on the case for a decade.


Original Daily News story on 9-year-old Joi Little, who was killed in 1988 with her mother Selena Cooper. It took 25 years convict and imprison Robert Fleming, Cooper's boyfriend, of the crime.

“Over the years, I’ve gotten closer with the family because they were just believing they weren’t going to be getting any justice,” Stradford said. “But we kept promising them we would not stop.”

The case moved forward as the science of DNA technology advanced.

A sample of Fleming’s DNA was first taken in 1998 while he was in state prison on drug and burglary convictions. In 2001, semen samples from the bloody sheets were tested and found to be a match, officials said.


New York Times story on brutal rape and murder of Joi Little, 9, and mom Selena Cooper.
But that wasn’t enough because Fleming could say the evidence came from consensual sex, the law enforcement source said.
Prosecutors only had one chance to get the killer.

Fleming was arrested in 2009 based on the DNA, his own statements and other circumstantial evidence from witnesses, the source said. But the case still moved at a snail’s pace, as Fleming fired five lawyers and was at one point ruled mentally incompetent, frustrating the victims’ families.

The stalling continued at his sentencing, as he went on a 20-minute, often incoherent, rant.

Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News
Grandmother Phyllis Little gets a hug from Delby Rodriguez after she told him about the sentencing. 
Fleming, who was dressed in a charcoal gray suit and purple dress shirt, proclaimed that statements he made to police were unlawfully obtained, that evidence was tampered with and that his prior drug arrests had been used to convict him.
“Yes, I smoked crack, but that doesn’t resolve me from my innocence,” Fleming said toward the end of his lengthy statement.

Much of his bizarre monologue left observers scratching their heads.

Florescu Viorel for New York Daily News
Phylis Little holds photos of the grandaughter she found murdered in 1988.

“I went through the evidence in my case with a fine-combed tooth,” Fleming said at one point.
Judge Margaret Clancy said the crime was unthinkable.

“This is one of the most horrific and brutal acts of any kind that I’ve seen in over 30 years in the criminal justice system,” said Clancy. “He demonstrated no mercy to his victims and no one — no parent, no grandparent — should have to live through this.”
The law enforcement source said everyone who witnessed the horrific scene was struck by the brutality.

“He posed them,” the source said. “He had their legs tied open akimbo so you had no choice but to look. It was disgusting.”
The family said they were thankful to the investigators — and the science.

“It was the miracle of DNA,” said Tyrone Little, the father of the slain girl. “Thankfully we have these advances in science and medicine. There was great police work by the NYPD and they got him.”

Phyllis Little has stayed close to the apartment where her granddaughter was killed — just a few buildings away — because she wanted to make sure the killer was caught. Now, she says, it’s time to move on.

“I’m gonna find another apartment someplace else,” she said. “I’m going to move now, I just don’t know exactly where.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/monster-murdered-9-year-old-mother-1988-sentenced-article-1.1445827#ixzz2e1GXWbuD