Suspect in string of rapes arrested

Jen Lawson

Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2004 | 11:10 a.m.

Metro Police have arrested a 28-year-old man who they suspect abducted as many as six women off the street, then raped and robbed them.

Police allege Ricardo Beltran is a serial rapist, and so far he has been charged in two cases with first-degree kidnapping, robbery and sexual assault, all involving the use of a deadly weapon, and more charges in connection with other cases are expected, Metro Sgt. Chris Darcy said Tuesday.

Beltran was arrested Sunday after falling for a ruse in which a Metro officer posed as a victim's friend who was trying to get her cell phone back, according to police. Beltran was taken into custody when he showed up for the meeting, according to police paperwork.

The 19-year-old alleged victim had reported to police that about 3 a.m. Sunday she had been walking along Maryland Parkway near Twain Avenue when a man she later identified as Beltran threatened her with a gun and led her by the arm to a champagne or silver-colored convertible, according to the police report.

The arrest report alleges the man drove her to the parking lot of a nearby apartment complex, held a knife to her throat and raped her in the car before stealing $250 from her purse and her cell phone.

He told the woman he wanted more money, drove her to a 7-Eleven at 3685 S. Maryland Parkway and waited in the car while the woman withdrew some cash. While in the store, the arrest report says, she told the clerk to call the police because she had just been raped, then she hid in the back of the store.

The man in the convertible was gone when police arrived. A Metro officer pretending to be a female friend of the alleged victim called the woman's cell phone and said the woman wanted her phone.

The man who answered the phone agreed to meet her at a nearby Wal-Mart. Beltran was stopped by patrol officers while en route to the Wal-Mart in a 1998 Chrysler Sebring convertible.

After he was arrested, a 17-year-old girl who had reported being raped on July 26 picked Beltran's photograph out of a line-up and said he was the man who had kidnapped her from the parking lot of a Denny's on the Strip just north of Tropicana Avenue when she had run out to her car to get cigarettes.

Within the next few days, police expect to charge him in connection with another rape July 18 at Harmon Avenue and Paradise Road, police said.

Detectives say they have at least three other cases, including one dating back to 2002, that could be linked to Beltran.

Police are waiting for the results of DNA tests to come back before charging Beltran with other assaults. Detectives are also having trouble tracking down some of the victims, Darcy said.

A few of the possible victims were prostitutes, Darcy said, but Beltran didn't appear to have been targeting prostitutes.

"He didn't care, he was just looking for a victim," Darcy said. "If it happened to be someone walking home or a prostitute who happened to be out, it didn't matter to him."

In the case that started in the Denny's parking lot, the teen said a man had grabbed her, told her he had a knife and made her get into his car. He drove her to an apartment complex parking lot on Paradise Avenue at Desert Inn Road.

She managed to pull a can of pepper spray from her purse and sprayed him, but her assailant held a large black folding knife against her neck and raped her, she told police.

The contents of her purse had spilled onto the floorboard and the rapist picked everything up and gave her purse back to her, keeping $300 and her cell phone, according to the report.

He apparently unintentionally put his knife into her purse, police said. Apparently the man who attacked her also had cut himself during the assault and left a blood spot on the purse, according to the police report.

Detectives are calling the rapes "the Harmon series" because the first recent incident believed to be linked to Beltran was at Harmon and Paradise, but Darcy said all half-dozen or so assaults occurred in different neighborhoods.

The last serial rape case Metro investigated before this one was the "bus stop rapist" in the summer of 2002, he said.

Xmeiga Gary received two consecutive life sentences July 1 after being convicted of raping five women. Police said he approached victims near bus stops, offered them rides and raped them.

"Exactly two years later, we have this case that's similar, but not identical in" pattern, Darcy said.