Cops catch their breath during lull in case of serial rapist

Karen Zekan

Thursday, Oct. 29, 1998 | 11:12 a.m.

Six months have passed without a sighting, an attack, even a hint that the valley's serial rapist is still on the prowl.

It's good news, Metro Police say. But not nearly as good, they say, as if the sexual deviant were behind bars, restrained from victimizing another woman ever again. But for now, authorities appreciate his absence.

"We keep hoping he's left town or is in jail somewhere," said Lt. Tom Monahan of Metro's sexual-assault detail, which has investigated hundreds of leads since the first of seven attacks was reported Dec. 25, 1996.

If anything, he said, it means more manpower can be devoted to the rest of the valley's sex crimes. Monahan's detail, on average, handles about 100 sexual assaults every month.

Similarities in sexual assaults reported after a Christmas Day attack two years ago have led police to believe one man is responsible for the unsolved series of crimes.

His typical pattern saw him targeting victims in the vicinity of Pecos Road and Mountain Vista, near Flamingo Road. Each time he'd dress in black, strike in the early morning and get in through a window or door left unlocked, or locked with a flimsy bolt that was easily jimmied open.

Ten months passed between his first attack on a 33-year-old woman in the Paradise Bay Club complex, 4185 Paradise, and his second and third attacks Oct. 11, 1997, and Oct. 20, 1997, at The Fountains, 3275 E. Flamingo.

He struck again Jan. 16, a block away from The Fountains.

The next attack on March 5 had valley residents unnerved when he left his familiar haunts and moved toward the northwest, attacking a woman in the 6600 block of Silverstream Avenue, near Rainbow Boulevard and U.S. 95.

By the time he attacked his sixth victim at the Flamingo West Apartments, 3950 Mountain Vista, on May 18, police were being inundated with leads.

The department allocated more personnel and resources to process the leads, creating a round-the-clock position for a detective in the Secret Witness office exclusively to field calls about the rapist.

But as the calls began to taper off from more than a hundred in a week to a handful a month, Metro scaled back its force. Those who exclusively had been working the case of the serial rapist remain involved in the investigation, but they have been returned to regular duty.

"I fielded the calls the first night, and it was exhausting as you can imagine," Monahan said. "But we realized that of the types of leads that came in, there wasn't any reason they couldn't wait until the next morning to handle."

Police are still evaluating the leads that filter in every few days, and the information is being entered into a database for further analysis.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Secret Witness hotline at 385-5555.