CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – A child rapist was convicted Tuesday of murdering a woman and her 12-year-old daughter in a crime that led to changes in the state’s sex offender laws.
Michael Bizanowicz, 44, was found guilty of raping and killing Joanne Presti, 34, and killing her daughter, Alyssa, in their Woburn home in January 2004.
Bizanowicz, who served three years in prison after a 1981 conviction for drugging and raping a Lawrence boy, was a Level 3 sex offender, considered the most dangerous and likely to re-offend.
He was not required to register as a sex offender in Woburn, even though he sometimes lived with a girlfriend in Joanne Presti’s neighborhood.
After the Prestis were murdered, the state’s Sex Offender Registry was changed to better classify and track the most dangerous offenders. The new law included a requirement that sex offenders list secondary addresses – defined as a place the offender lives for a total of 14 days in any given year, such as Bizanowicz’s girlfriend’s apartment.
The Presti family pushed for changes in the law, arguing that better tracking could have alerted Joanne Presti about Bizanowicz when she checked the registry with local police.
Bizanowicz was accused of binding, gagging and raping Joanne Presti before stabbing her multiple times. Prosecutors said he also chased Alyssa Presti upstairs to her bedroom before beating her and slashing her throat.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
