Cigarette links man to crimes from '02.(Capital Region)

SCHENECTADY - A DNA-laden cigarette butt has linked a convicted Rotterdam robber to two unsolved Niskayuna burglaries from 2002.

On Sept. 27, a jury convicted Paul Cipriani, of Campbell Avenue in Schenectady, of throwing a brick through a gas station window in Rotterdam and taking about $1,000 in cigarettes. Cipriani left behind a cigarette, though, which held enough DNA for the state forensics lab to run a match.

The genetic …