Thursday, May 06, 1999
Reward rises for leads in Mason rapes
BY SHEILA McLAUGHLIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MASON — A reward fund climbed to $2,000 Wednesday as a task force of local and state investigators try to solve a string of rapes in the southwest section of town.
A woman who wanted to remain anonymous contributed $500 and Crimestoppers has chipped in $1,000 to an existing $500 reward offered by the police in an attempt to generate leads in the case.
Last week, two agents from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI) offered their help in finding the masked suspect who raped two girls last summer and may have struck again in an April 14 attack on a 27-year-old single mother on Butler Warren Road.
All of the rapes occurred in or near a middle-class neighborhood between Tylersville Road and Western Row.
Mason Detective Patrick Ellis said DNA from semen samples in the first two rapes matched, meaning the same suspect committed both assaults. Police should know in about two weeks whether the third attack was committed by the same man, he said.
So far, police have checked hundreds of leads and interviewed 50 potential suspects. Six or seven men have given blood samples to be compared with DNA from the crime scenes, Detective Ellis said.
He is confident of an arrest.
“We're getting somewhere with this. We're coming closer,” he said Wednesday.
The latest rape occurred near Broadview Drive. Police said the rapist entered through an unlocked door and attacked the woman as she slept on a couch just before 5 a.m. Her three children, ages 9 and under, were asleep in nearby bedrooms.
That was a year and a day after the first rape, which involved a 14-year-old on Essex Drive. The rapist broke into the house through a window, police said.
Three months later, a 12-year-old girl was sexually assaulted in a backyard about a mile away on Brookcrest Drive by a man wearing a dark ski mask.
All of the victims described their attacker as white man in his mid- to late-30s, about 5-foot-10 with a medium build. In each incident, the attacker was wearing a ski mask.
The 27-year-old told police her attacker had reddish brown hair, a mustache and blue eyes, and was wearing camouflage pants.
Since the April 14 attack, Mason officers have canvassed the neighborhood, distributing fliers and asking residents to report anything suspicious.
Detective Ellis applauded the help from state agents. The task force is now working on a profile of the suspect.
“These guys are the pros. These guys know their business inside out. They've already given me a bunch of ideas,” he said.
Anyone with information about the attacks can call Detective Ellis at 398-5050 or 573-3354.
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