Wednesday, October 06, 1999
Series of rapes has area spooked
Officials mum, but residents taking action
BY SHEILA McLAUGHLIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
They are buying dogs, changing jogging habits and keeping doors and windows locked even during daylight hours.
One sleeps with hair spray on her nightstand. Another tries to booby-trap her home before climbing into bed each night.
These women don't want to become the next victim of a serial rapist already responsible for four attacks in 18 months on women and children in Warren and Hamilton counties, and maybe a fifth one Monday morning in Colerain Township.
“I think about it all the time,” said a pony-tailed woman in her early 40s. “I feel more lost than anything. And helpless. I look all the time now for somebody with blue eyes and a red mustache.”
The woman, who did not want to give her name for fear of drawing the rapist's attention, was among two dozen women in a Deerfield Township subdivision who gathered one evening last week to hear Deputy Mike Krznarich's talk on protecting against sexual assault.
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DON'T BE A VICTIM
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The Warren County Sheriff's Office offers these safety tips on how to protect against sexual assaults and what to do if you become a victim:
• Lock all doors and windows.
• Install and use dead bolt locks, a burglar alarm system, peep holes, and outside motion detector lighting.
• Do not open the door to solicitors and others. Ask for identification and verify with a phone call.
• Call police about anyone suspicious in the neighborhood.
• Never jog or walk alone. Vary exercise patterns.
• Develop a safety plan for your family: teach children to leave the home immediately, run to a neighbor's house and call 911 even if an assault is in progress.
• Keep a cellular phone on the nightstand in case someone breaks in and disables the phone system. Program in the 7-digit number for your county's emergency dispatching center because 911 calls from cellular phones may not be relayed to the proper agency.
• If you are assaulted, get to a safe location and call police. Go to a hospital for examination and treatment. Do not shower, bathe, change clothes, comb hair, smoke or drink to preserve evidence.
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Deputy Krznarich of the Warren County Sheriff's Office is not involved in the investigation of the rapes in Mason and Montgomery. But the incidents were close enough to cause fear in this community, he says.
On this night, he offers safety tips and tells the women to formulate a plan that will guar antee their survival if they are attacked.
It is clear the women are spooked. Apparently, so are their children.
“When my 13-year-old daughter baby-sits, I have her call me every 15 minutes,” said a red-haired mother of three. “Two of my kids won't sleep alone. They sleep together. They are terrified.”
Task force not talking
Two months after a task force of federal, state and local police was established to find the rapist, detectives know their suspect has blue eyes and a reddish mustache, spotted through the mask he wears in his assaults.
If they have leads to his identity, they're not saying.
Since the beginning, they have turned to other crimes to help pinpoint an identity. Even before the task force was formed, detectives methodically questioned convicted sex offenders in the area, taking blood samples from some to compare with DNA evidence from the rapes.
Investigators also have looked at past unsolved burglaries, attempted break-ins, peeping-Tom reports and other incidents that could provide some clues.
Members of the task force won't discuss the current investigation publicly. They don't want the rapist to know their next move.
“We want to catch the guy,” said Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen, who is spokesman for the task force.
Added Warren County Prosecutor Tim Oliver: “The agencies are working very closely together, meeting on a regular basis, using every available technology. We think we're going to get this guy.”
Through police reports and other sources, The Enquirer has pieced together some details of the series of assaults that are changing suburban life in Greater Cincinnati.
String began in 1998
The attacks began about 4 a.m. April 13, 1998, with the rape of a 14-year-old. She was snatched from her bed on Essex Drive in Mason in southern Warren County and sexually assaulted outdoors by a man wearing a ski mask.
Other attacks that were linked by DNA comparisons to the same man include:
• July 25, 1998: A 12-year-old was attacked by a masked man hiding in a carport when she returned to her Brookcrest Drive residence in Mason about 3:30 a.m.
• April 14, 1999: Again in Mason, a 27-year-old single mother home alone with her children on Butler-Warren Road was attacked as she slept on the living room couch. She told police the man wearing a ski-mask tied her up and raped her before 5 a.m. The woman described her attacker as 5-feet-10 to 5-feet-11, medium build, with blue eyes and a reddish-brown mustache.
Mr. Allen would not discuss the July 25, 1999, rape of a 6-year-old girl in Montgomery, but sources familiar with the investigation said it was connected to the same rapist by DNA. In that incident, the girl told police she was forced outside the family's home on Baywind Drive and raped by a masked man. The child's father and other family members were asleep upstairs at the time. The girl apparently came upon the man when she heard a noise and got out of bed.
The task force also is investigating whether the attempted rapes of three teen-agers are linked to the serial rapist. The incidents include an attack on a 16-year-old Sharonville girl on Sept. 24, 1998, and separate assaults on July 29, 1999, involving a 17-year-old in Blue Ash and a 19-year-old in Springdale.
Because the teens escaped before rape could occur, there are no DNA samples in those cases that could confirm a suspect, police said.
An assault in Colerain Township on Monday indicates the rapist may have headed across town.
In that attack, a 10-year-old told police she was asleep on a downstairs couch at her family's John Gray Road residence when a man in a ski mask forced her outside and raped her at 5:15 a.m. The child's mother and two other adults were asleep upstairs.
The description of that attack and those in Mason and Montgomery are strikingly similar, according to offense reports.
All of the assaults have occurred before dawn. The rapist gains entry to each house through unlocked doors or windows. The younger girls are taken outside the house before the sexual assault takes place.
The rapist claims to have a weapon and does not beat or seriously injure his victims, who all are small in stature and have varying hair color.
He used restraints in only one incident, possibly because his victim was older and more difficult to subdue.
Suspect profiled
Working with the task force, the FBI has developed a profile of the suspect, which identifies him as a power reassurance rapist, a man who feels inadequate and uses rape to reassure himself.
Peter Smerick, a retired FBI profiler who trains police and works as a consultant in cases of stalking, workplace violence, serial crime and other issues, is not familiar with the string of local rapes.
But he offered some insight into this type of rapist, who he said is less violent and sadistic than those in three other behavioral classifications used to profile rapists.
“The bottom line for all rapists is that it's a crime of power and control. But, in his mind, he is making love to these women. It's not really a crime of rape, at least in his mind. The victims are looking at it totally different,” Mr. Smerick said.
Power reassurance rapists often compliment their victims during the course of the assault, usually strike by surprise and with some forethought — selecting their targets in advance through voyeurism or peeking into windows, Mr. Smerick said.
“They are not going to look any different than you and I. They are able to blend into their surroundings. They can walk into a neighborhood and not look like a Charles Manson type of guy. People wouldn't neces sarily call 911,” Mr. Smerick said in explaining how the rapists go undetected.
He suspects the local rapist started out attacking women in an area where he lived or worked but has gained confidence with experience and now is branching out. That could explain his move from Mason to Montgomery and now, possibly to Colerain Township, Mr. Smerick said.
Local authorities can only wonder whether the April and July dates hold any significance. Mr. Smerick doubts it, saying the rapist could have decided to “lie low” for a while for fear that police were looking for him.
And while raping a child would normally classify the suspect as a pedophile, that notion doesn't necessarily hold true in cases of serial rape, Mr. Smerick said. That's because a serial rapist, by nature, turns to assault to satisfy some sort of fantasy.
“I have, in fact, seen rapists attack people from age 6 to age 85. Many times it depends on vulnerability, who is available,” Mr. Smerick said.
“Teen-agers might be their fantasy, but by the same token whoever falls into their lair and clutches becomes a victim.”
Deputy Krznarich hopes his crime-prevention lecture will minimize risks.
“I put chairs under my door knobs, if that helps,” one woman said.
It does, Deputy Krznarich remarked.
However, precautions don't guarantee safety, he stressed, adding that two of his immediate relatives were victims of rape.
Deputy Krznarich encouraged the women to practice safety, but not live in fear. “No matter what happens,” he told them, “You will survive.”
Mr. Smerick, the profiling expert, said he doesn't expect the rapes to stop unless the suspect is incarcerated or moves away.
Typically, this brand of criminal is difficult to catch. Even with the best police work, many serial crime investigations require a stroke of luck to solve, he said.
So, he posed this question: “Why aren't people locking their doors?”
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