BAY RIDGE — The sex offender still suspected in a Bay Ridge woman’s 2008 disappearance, Michael Mele, was sentenced Thursday to one to three years in prison for failure to change an address, in violation of his probation as a sex offender. This crime was unrelated to the December 2008 disappearance of 25-year-old Laura Garza, but it will presumably give prosecutors more time to build a possible murder case against Mele, 24, who is the last person Garza was seen with.

Mele was on probation after he pled guilty to groping and masturbating on women in the Palisades Mall parking lot in Upstate New York, including one woman who was with her daughter.

“These mistakes do not represent me,� Mele reportedly told the court before being sentenced.

Orange County Judge Nicholas DeRosa referred to Mele’s acts at the Palisades Mall as something he would have expected to see “in a secure mental health facility, or zoo, not in a mall in the United States of America,� reported the Times Herald-Record.

A prosecutor stated that Mele’s failure to change his address led New York City police searching for Garza to Mele’s parents’ home, even though he had moved. The prosecutor said the parents “supported� Mele by not telling authorities that he was in a different place.

Mele has not yet faced any charges related to Garza’s disappearance. Orange County authorities have not located Garza or her remains despite months of searching the wooded areas around Wallkill, but police have stated that a case is slowly being built against him and that prosecutors may intend to indict him without a body.

Mele and Garza met at the Chelsea nightclub Marquee before driving off together for Mele’s home in Wallkill, about 70 miles north of Brooklyn. Garza, a Texas transplant who resided on Shore Road in Bay Ridge, had moved to New York City just a few months prior.

Mele is scheduled to appear in Newburgh Town Court on Nov. 16 for a hearing related to other probation violations, including skipping court-ordered counseling sessions and entering an establishment that served alcohol.

He could face two years in prison for those violations.

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