By Jim Hannah
The Cincinnati Enquirer

FORT WRIGHT - The FBI has stepped in to help catch a serial rapist who has been targeting store clerks for 12 years across the Tristate.

Composite of rapist

"Typically, the subject preys on employees working alone in businesses located in strip malls and shopping plazas near interstate highways," said FBI Agent William P. O'Leary, who leads the bureau's Northern Kentucky office. "He is well spoken, clean cut, very disarming."

The FBI is one of 11 law enforcement agencies, including the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office, that have formed a special task force to hunt down a predator that has eluded them for more than a decade.

The move came after the police chief in the Northern Kentucky bedroom community where the man last struck called the FBI for help.

Dan Kreinest, chief of Fort Wright police, said he was concerned because the frequency of the attacks had increased - five since the beginning of this year.

The robberies and sexual assaults believed to have been committed by the same person began in February 1992 in Colerain Township. There was another in February 1999 in Covington

The man struck again in Grove City, Ohio, in November and three times in January: in Aurora., in Dry Ridge and in Washington Court House, Ohio

There were two attacks in February, one in Cold Spring and the most recent, Feb. 28 in Fort Wright.

DNA has positively linked the same man to the Colerain Township, Covington, Aurora and Cold Spring crimes.

In all the attacks, the man's actions have remained the same.

O'Leary said the man enters the business and talks to the clerk, sometimes inquiring about a job. He then leaves, only to return when the clerk is alone, many times near closing. He takes the clerk to a back room, restrains her, rapes her and then takes cash from the register. He uses a small silver-colored or shiny handgun.

A wanted poster appearing in windows of stores across Northern Kentucky says the rapist is a white man, 35 to 40, 5-foot-6 to 6-feet-tall with a medium to stocky build and dark brown hair.

He was seen getting into a maroon or dark-colored station wagon with an Ohio bicentennial license plate after the Fort Wright attack.

Police ask anyone with information about the crimes to call Crime Stoppers at 352-3040 or officers with the joint investigation at (859) 334-3500. Tips can also be e-mailed to tipline@boonecountyky.org.

A wanted poster can be downloaded from the Internet by going to Web site and clicking on the rape/robbery joint investigation link.

E-mail jhannah@enquirer.com