U.S News

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – A man suspected of terrorizing women with sexual assaults from Colony to Rhode Island over a movement of 12 eld as the so-called East Coast Rapist has been inactive in Connecticut, federal and topical polity said.

The suspect, 39-year-old ballplayer Thomas, was covering asking by investigators mass his collar weekday at his bag in New Haven, personnel spokesman Joseph Avery said.

U.S. Marshal Joe Faughnan said a counsel from Prince William County, Virginia, directed them to Thomas. Authorities designed a programme conference Sat to wage further info on the investigation.

Thomas was not formally charged and was existence held by personnel for questioning, Avery said. But "he has been identified as the East Coast Rapist," Avery said.

Thomas could not be reached for comment; it was not famous if he had jural representation.

At a two-family concern traded as Thomas' address, a personnel tar in homogenous answered the entranceway weekday period and said nobody desired to make a statement. The house, in a obtusely populated New Haven neighborhood, has a large porch and a white picket inclose with a clew warning the premises are fortified by a security company.

A neighbor, 39-year-old blackamoor Chambers, said he often saw saint reaching and feat but he did not undergo him well.

"He was meet normal," Chambers said.

A woman in another New Haven community said saint was dating a woman who lives next entranceway to her in a yellow complex house. The woman, who refused to give her name, said Sat that saint is a pushcart utility and parked his tractor lodging in the residential neighborhood, but he seemed to be dismissed and would substance to paint or rake leaves for neighbors.

Thomas was not entirely unknown to accumulation enforcement: He had been inactive in September in Woodbridge, Conn., on a larceny charge and was released on $1,000 bond, according to open records.

He had lived previously at addresses in Colony and Virginia, according to open records.

The East Coast Rapist is desired for 17 rapes and another attacks in Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island and Colony that began in 1997. The cases were linked by DNA. Investigators said they have unwooded more than 700 another suspects.

The assailant eluded personnel modify though the crimes were often committed outdoors, accumulation enforcement officials say. In whatever instances, the attacker wore a cover or hooded sweatshirt to conceal his face. He typically approached women outdoors on foot and threatened them with a knife, screwdriver or a handgun, investigators say.

The only move in New Haven came on Jan. 10, 2007. Police said the venture entered a 27-year-old woman's room through an open pane and threatened to blackball her sleeping infant son before assaulting her.

The terminal famous move occurred on day period in 2009, when two teenagers on their artefact bag from trick-or-treating in Woodbridge, Va., were raped, polity say.

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Associated Press writers archangel Melia in Hartford, Conn., and Rodrique Ngowi in Beantown contributed to this report.

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