- April 19, 2024
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A man accused of raping an incapacitated woman at his home in Beverly Beach in 2017 has been arrested in Orange County and will be extradited to Flagler County.
The victim arrived at an FCSO station with her husband on Jan 2, 2018, and told deputies that a man she knew, Larry Anthony Cavallaro, had raped her on Dec. 17.
The victim, 40, said she and another woman had gone to Cavallaro’s house on Oceanshore Boulevard that night for drinks after the women’s shifts at a local restaurant ended.
Cavallaro poured each woman a drink from a V8 container, calling the beverages rum runners and saying the recipe was homemade.
The victim said she fell down after one drink. She then woke up naked in Cavallaro’s bed some time later, and Cavallaro was performing a sex act on her, she told deputies. She believed he’d drugged her.
The victim’s husband said he’d become worried that night when his wife didn’t come home after her shift. When he called her phone, the calls were repeatedly declined. He saw that her car was at Cavallaro’s residence. He assumed they would be outside having a drink, he told a deputy.
When he got to the backyard, he saw that a door to the house was open, and there was movement inside.
He entered the home and saw Cavallaro “jump up from under the covers” of the bed, shirtless and with his pants partially zipped. Then his wife sat up.
The husband wrestled Cavallaro to the ground and held him there, he told deputies, “until he could get his bearings as to what he was witnessing.”
At first, he thought his wife was cheating on him. He let Cavallaro up, and left.
But when he got home with his wife, he “began to realize that realized she was extremely intoxicated, and believed she needed medical attention,” according to an FCSO a charging affidavit.
He took her to get medical care. A rape kit was collected, with DNA evidence.
Deputies also interviewed the other woman who was at Cavallaro’s home that night.
She confirmed that she and the victim had each had one drink. She remembered seeing the victim fall, and recalled that Cavallaro had told the victim to go lay down, and that the victim had done so on his bed.
She didn’t remember anything else about the evening until later, when she was “vomiting excessively” at her home later that night.
She “advised that she is used to having casual alcoholic drinks and does not understand how one drink could have made her become so intoxicated,” according to the charging affidavit.
Her boyfriend, who’d been with her at his home that night after she returned from Cavallaro’s, said he’d seen her “become extremely intoxicated and ill.” When he arrived at his home, he said, she was “leaning over and out of her vehicle in his driveway.”
The victim, the victim’s husband, and the other woman all picked Cavallaro out of a photo lineup.
On Jan. 17, deputies had the victim place a phone call, recorded by law enforcement, to Cavallaro.
The victim told Cavallaro that she didn’t remember what had happened that night after she fell to her knees. He replied, “You were out of it.” She confronted him about waking up to find him performing a sex act on her.
“Larry never denies doing those acts to her,” the charging affidavit’s summary of the call states. “Larry states that he didn’t want to do something that would be taking advantage of her and began to tell her that she was in and out of it, before the recording stops.”
The recording ended because the victim, who was overwhelmed, stood up, causing the audio recorder to clatter to the ground.
Jan. 25, detectives interviewed Cavallaro at his home. He invited them inside and “voluntarily started sharing information about the evening,” telling them that he’d given the women rum runners, and saying each had only consumed one. He did not “mention any details of both he and (the victim) being in bed together or having any contact,” and, when asked by a detective if he’d had sexual contact with the victim, Cavallaro said he had not.
A detective asked him if his DNA would be on any part of the victim’s body. His response is redacted in the FCSO’s charging affidavit. (The FCSO redacts potentially self-incriminating statements by suspects.)
He said the victim “was out of it, and that he was not interested in having sex with someone who was out of it.” Some of his additional responses to questions are also redacted.
Before the detectives left, Cavallaro said the victim had been so intoxicated that she was like a corpse that night.
“Man, I don’t deal with corpses, you know,” he told the detectives.
The FCSO assigned the case to its Major Case Unit and sought the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its Quantico,Virginia Crime Laboratory in processing the evidence, according to an FCSO news release.
Detectives got an arrest warrant for Cavallaro, now a Winter Park resident, on June 7.
“This is another outstanding job by our Major Case detectives,” Sheriff Rick Staly said in the FCSO news release. “These are difficult cases that take time to build. I commend Detective Cpl. Hristakopoulos for his perseverance to prove through the evidence that the suspect sexually assaulted his victim. It’s now time for him to face the consequences of his actions.”
Judge Melissa Distler set the Cavallaro’s initial bond at none and authorized a nationwide extradition June 7. Orange County Sherif’s Office deputies arrested Cavallaro in Winter Park the same evening. He will be extradited to Flagler County.
