East Coast Rapist

For 13 years the East Coast Rapist remained a mystery.  He struck at random up and down the east coast of the United States.  Listen to the story of how one predator brazenly hunted women as if they were nothing more than prey and how tireless investigators didn’t stop until they brought Aaron H Thomas to justice.

Full disclosure, this episode deals with the subject of rape.

Location

Our story begins in Prince George County, Maryland. The county borders the eastern edge of Washington D.C. and is part of the Washington D.C. metro area. It is named after Prince George of Denmark, husband to Princess Anne of England.

Hunting

On March 16, 2010, an article was published in The Washington Post entitled “After 13 years, police still hunting for the East Coast Rapist.” These are the opening paragraphs from that article written by Josh White and Maria Gold (give them credit, it explains the nuances of this case so well that I wanted to provide the first few sentences).

He lurks at gas stations and payphones and bus stops, blending in so well that people don’t notice him at first. Has a smooth, deep voice. He is black, he smokes and he is right-handed. He is in his early to mid-30s, is fit, stands about 6 feet tall, likes wearing camouflage clothes and black hats, and once had a badly chipped tooth.

The man studies women carefully. He watches them leave for work and walk home from the mall, and he notices whether they lock their windows and doors. Knows when they are most vulnerable and when they are home alone with their children. He stalks them in neighborhoods he knows well.

Then he rapes them and vanishes.

Josh White and Maria Gold – The Washington Post

The East Coast Rapist had been attacking and raping women for over 13 years by 2010. Police were able to collect a lot of identifying information, but just not who the East Coast Rapist was. It took some old-fashion detective work combined with updated technology to track this nefarious predator.

The Beginning

Around midnight on February 19, 1997, a 25-year-old woman is walking alone along the Marlboro Pike in Forestville, Maryland when a man on a bike wearing a ski mask approaches her. He strikes up a conversation before pulling out a gun and raping the young woman. The woman didn’t get a good look at her attacker but did notice that one of his teeth was either chipped or broken off and he wore what looked like a green camouflage coat. He appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s.

This attack would provide investigators with DNA evidence that would be held in a database for unsolved crimes. Unfortunately, this young woman was not the last victim in Prince George’s County. Several more attacks would take place into the spring of 1997 leading police to believe that he was from the area as victims had seen him in the area before their attacks.

Police sounded the alarm and warned area women to be “on guard”. The media coverage nicknamed him the “bicycle-riding rapist.” Investigators at the time believed the rapist might have seen the media coverage and decided to change his m.o. He stopped using the bicycle and gun and switched to walking and a knife.

Summer of ’99

Investigators realized that by the summer of 1999 the serial rapist had expanded his hunting grounds. This time he was branching out onto Fairfax’s Route 1 corridor. He would be seen lurking at gas stations and bus stops during the night.

One night a woman was walking home after picking up some groceries. A man grabbed her off her fee from behind and took her behind a somewhat isolated building. He took off one of her shoes and pulled only one of her legs out of her pants. This made it more difficult for the victim to run. He then raped her and took off into the night. He would continue to use this technique, taking off one shoe and pant leg, several more times.

Hitting Close to Home

By November 2000, the man once again changed his hunting grounds. This time he switched to roadways that lead into apartment and townhome communities.

Investigators believed that the rapist could easily watch women as they came and went and choose the best time to attack them. One such attack was on a 35-year-old woman who had just gotten off a bus near a new townhome community. The rapist approached her pretending to be lost. He then put her into a headlock and lead her to a nearby wooded area while brandishing a knife. What the rapist didn’t know was this victim was in the military and had hand-to-hand combat training.

She was able to wrestle the six-inch serrated knife away from him. When she tried to stab him he claimed he was “just joking” and took off running. This knife was linked to the man who would become known as the East Coast Rapist. DNA from his skin cells was taken from the knife and matched previous victims. This is also the only known item that the East Coast Rapist had left behind at any of the crime scenes to this point.

Year of the Snake (2001)

In May 2001 in Leesburg, Virginia the East Coast Rapist struck once again. This time in an apartment complex where he grabbed a woman from behind wrapping his arms around her. The woman thought it was her husband and laughed, but when she looked down she saw the arms did not belong to her husband. The man then told her to shut up or he would kill her with his knife.

The 41-year-old woman had been walking back-n-forth from her apartment to her car as she was in the process of moving. Around 5 p.m. she had sent her son off to his taekwondo lesson while she finished up moving. While she had been down at her car the rapist had taken the opportunity to enter the nearly empty apartment. When the victim returned he pushed her onto the bedroom floor. What the victim saw was not a knife, but an orange-handled Phillips head screwdriver.

To change up his attack the rapist used shoelaces he had brought with him (again shades of the East Area Rapist aka The Golden State Killer) and tied her hands over her head. The rapist then covered the victim’s face with her t-shirt. While being raped the victim tried to notify her downstairs neighbor by banging her foot on the floor. She remembered that on occasions when she had been running on her treadmill the downstairs neighbor complained of the noise.

This time there were no complaints.

Victim Tries to Get Him to Stop

The victim didn’t give up trying to get her rapist to stop. She told him she was having trouble breathing, but once he moved the shirt from her face he threatened her again telling her not to tell the police because he lived right across the hall. As the rapist had done on previous occasions he also complimented the victim telling her she was “fine.”

Once the attack was over the East Coast Rapist gathered up the victim’s clothes, shoes, and cell phone along with the shoelaces and screwdriver that he had brought along and ran off. The victim was left naked and terrified. The victim didn’t stay down long and ran to a nearby window yelling for neighbors to call 911. When police arrived they found the victim in the only thing she could find in her apartment, Christmas wrapping paper.

Late for Work

Several days after Christmas in 2001 (seven months later) a 29-year-old woman was running late for work. She quickly got dressed and rushed to the nearby bus stop in Alexandria, Virginia. While she waited she noticed a man smoking a cigarette standing along the treeline. She thought he was just being polite and standing away from her while he smoked. Once he finished he approached her asking her when the next bus was to arrive. He then told her that he had a weapon on him and to follow him.

She was able to see what she thought was a knife in his pocket. He then told her that he thought she too much. He was right because she worked two jobs to support her four young children. The man placed the tip of the knife to the side of her neck forcing her down into some mulch beside a nearby apartment complex. He once again pulled off only one shoe and one pant leg.

While he raped her the woman prayed out loud which only angered the man who stopped momentarily. He soon carried on with the rape telling her it felt “too good to stop.” Once it was over the woman counted backward from 100. By the time she got to 30, she was up and running back to her place wanting to shower. Her husband, fortunately, convinced her not to shower and to contact the police. Police were able to recover DNA that linked this victim to the East Coast Rapist.

Two for the Price of One

In August the East Coast Rapist would strike again this time becoming bolder in his approach and attacks. This time he choose two victims at once. Two teenage girls were walking home from the Marlow Heights shopping center near the Washington Beltway when a man pulled a gun on them. He forced them into a wooded area where he raped both young women.

Four Years

While investigators were actively trying to find the man responsible for multiple attacks in the Fairfax, Virginia area there had been no new attacks for over four years. Police didn’t know if the East Coast Rapist had been doing jail time, was serving in the military, decided to lie low, or even stop on his own.

That didn’t seem to be the case. In November 2006 in Cranston, Rhode Island (400 miles away from Virginia) an 11-year-old girl is home in her living room doing her homework when she sees a man trying to unlock the sliding glass door. The man is able to get the door slightly open when the girl screams and the family’s dog, a black Great Dane, begins to bark. This scares off the man.

The young girl’s mom told police that she had just gotten home from work and perhaps the man was thinking that she was alone. The police would find three drops of semen on the outside of the sliding glass door. I don’t think the mom was the intended target. The DNA would match rapes in Maryland and Virginia.

The East Coast Rapist was on the move.

Year of the Pig (2007)

At 1 a.m. on January 10th, 2007 a 27-year-old woman is asleep in her New Haven, Conn. bedroom with her 11-month-old son sleeping soundly in the crib beside her. A dark figure appears at her bedroom door telling her not to yell out and threatened to harm her son if she didn’t do what he wanted. The man wore dark clothing and had a black mask or hoodie that concealed his face. The man got on top of the frightened young woman and put a pillow over her face.

He then proceeded to rape her while telling her she shouldn’t have left her window open for him to get in. After the man finished he fled from the scene. Investigators once again felt that he had purposely chosen this apartment complex as it was not easy to find. It was tucked away in a residential area.

There would be two more attacks on women in their homes where the assailant used the threat of harming their children to get them to comply. He would not leave DNA behind in these cases since he used a condom.

Halloween 2009

Three teenage girls (two were 17 and the other 16) were out trick-or-treating in Woodbridge, Virginia when a man came up behind them and ordered them by gunpoint down a steep embankment into a wooded ravine. The girls were walking by the Dale City shopping center and just a few blocks from their home when the rapist approached them. He asked them if they had a lighter and then if they had any money.

He wore a black ski mask and used a gun to direct the girls where he wanted them to go. Once down into the ravine he told them through clenched teeth (shades of the Golden State Killer) to lie down side-by-side on their stomachs facing away from him. The three girls held hands, each afraid to try to run for fear that their assailant would shoot them.

The 16-year-old dimmed her cell phone and sent a text to her mom and several friends at 9:05 p.m. telling them that a man was raping one of her friends in the woods behind the CVS and to call 911. At one point, she was able to call her mother and then 911 herself asking for help repeatedly before her call was dropped. Her mother ran to the area her daughter described just as the police were arriving from the other side.

When the rapist heard the sirens and saw the lights he suddenly stopped. He told the girls to stay down and not to move. All they heard was him running away. Investigators felt that these latest attacks were done by the East Coast Rapist as it had several of the trademarks he used in his previous attacks.

Mystery Predator

Police knew quite a lot about how The East Coast Rapist operated, just not who he was. They knew he had been in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in Fairfax, Virginia, up to New Haven, Conn, and to Rhode Island.

To this point, DNA connected the East Coast Rapist to 12 rapes, but investigators believed he could be tied to more than 17 rapes. Investigators also felt that this man was constantly searching for his next victim. They felt that he searched in the areas where he was comfortable such as where he lived and worked. His m.o. was to attack women in secluded areas of neighborhoods that may not see a lot of traffic. He would also have planned out an escape route in advance.

With some of these attacks, it appears along with the stalking the East Coast Rapist was also being a peeping tom. This told investigators that he was taking note of woman’s homes and apartments, looking at the traffic in the areas they lived in and how often they locked their windows and doors. He would confront his victims in the dark in areas that they also felt comfortable in, such as their neighborhoods or even in their homes. His methods of attack would vary from using a gun, a knife, a broken bottle, and even a screwdriver.

He may approach his victims by striking up a conversation or making a startling command. While raping his victims he would go from complimenting them to threatening to kill them. At this point, he had only ever threatened to kill but never followed through.

No DNA Match

His DNA did not match any known criminals in any databases. Investigators felt that the East Coast Rapist knew this and that is the reason that he failed to wear a condom for most of his rapes. Besides attacking at night the rapist was good at hiding his face from his victims by either wearing some sort of covering or holding objects over victim’s faces to obstruct their view.

He left very little evidence behind. He was described by his victims as a black male with a medium complexion. He had a deep voice and a medium build.

Can It Get Any Harder?

Stranger rapes are some of the hardest sexual assaults to solve since there are no known connections to the victim. This is purposely done by the predator.

Investigators were combing through DNA databases. They were also looking into the possibility that the East Coast Rapist worked as a long haul truck driver, was a member of the military, or was some type of utility installer. It had to be someone who would blend in. He could be gone for long periods of time with no one becoming suspicious.

The End

The search ended on Friday, March 11, 2011, on Pendleton Street in New Haven, Connecticut.

The U.S. Marshall Service had been keeping an eye on that residence based upon a tip that had come in from the digital billboards asking for information on the East Coast Rapist. There was also a website eastcoastrapist.com. Investigators got 44,000 hits in the first 12 hours of the billboards going live. Billboards with pictures of the various sketches taken over the years were up in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and Virginia where the East Coast Rapist attacked.

They were also up in New York, New Jersey, and Delaware.

The resident that the marshall and investigators were looking into was 39-year-old Aaron H. Thomas, an unemployed truck driver. He had been living in New Haven since 2005. Investigators followed Thomas for a few days. They even followed him to his court hearing for a previous larceny charge. 

Aaron H. Thomas was seen smoking a cigarette which he discarded outside the courthouse.

You can guess what happened next.

Investigators carefully collected the butt and submitted it immediately for DNA testing. After confirming the DNA belonged to the man who had been known as the East Coast Rapist, Aaron H Thomas was taken into custody by the US Marshall Service. Upon his arrest, he told authorities that they had the right man and asked why hadn’t they picked him up sooner? They notified other jurisdictions of Thomas’s arrest. Prince Williams County in Virginia had an arrest warrant filed that night.

Hours after Aaron H Thomas had been arrested he attempted to hang himself in his jail cell. Fortunately, he was not successful.

Aaron H Thomas

Although Thomas’s father was a high-ranking member of the Washington D.C. Police Department he didn’t act like an upstanding citizen at home. Aaron would suffer years of physical abuse at the hands of his father.

Aaron H Thomas got in trouble at a young age for some pretty serious offenses or at least some that should have had his parents concerned. He was known for torturing animals in their neighborhood. One time he gave his brother a sleeping pill just to see what would happen. Thomas would end up spending approximately three years in a treatment center during high school.

Thomas’s father committed suicide.

After high school, Thomas was kicked out of his home and ended up living on the streets. He says that it was at this point that there was something in him that he could not control and he gave into “his animalistic urges.” Thomas was 19 to 20 years old at the time he committed his first rape.

He would claim after his arrest that he didn’t feel his attacks were violent and that all he did was find a woman and scare her into giving him sex. The very definition of rape is non-consensual sex.

He admitted to going out and scouting locations that would be hidden enough to carry out his rapes. Aaron H Thomas also claimed that once he started raping women that it “felt just too good to stop.” He admitted that he was able to go long periods between raping women when his life was back on track .

• i.e. holding a job, having a place to live, and being in a relationship

Thomas’s Day of Reckoning

The state of Connecticut agreed to transfer Aaron H Thomas back to the state of Virginia and hold off on their case as long as Virginia was able to obtain a lengthy criminal sentence. He faced six counts of rape in Virginia.

In March 2013, Aaron H Thomas was sentenced to two life sentences after pleading guilty to the attack that had taken place in Leesburg, Virginia while the young mother was moving out of her apartment. He received the maximum sentence for his crime. One life term for the rape. Once life term for the abduction.

This was is in addition to the three life sentences he received for the Halloween 2009 attacks on the three girls from Prince William County. He pleads guilty in November 2012. The defense initially tried to say that Thomas was too incompetent to stand trial. However, the court ordered an evaluation that showed that Thomas was only playing at being insane. When questioned by investigators about the Halloween rapes after his arrest, Thomas said that he saw the girls, got an urge, and took them into the woods. The reason he only raped two of the girls and not all three was that he felt the 16-year-old was “too tiny.”

A psychologist testified during the sentencing hearing that Thomas was a “sexual deviant.” According to the Wiley Online Library, Sexual Deviant refers to “behaviors where individuals seek erotic gratification through means that are considered odd, different, or unacceptable to most”

Thomas Changed His Appearance

Aaron H Thomas has admitted over the years he purposely changed his appearance to avoid looking like the sketches that had been released by police. He also would watch for any coverage of the rapes he committed. He stopped raping women in Prince Williams County for fear of being caught.

Finally, he claimed that he was glad he got caught, but only saw himself as being “somewhat a predator.”

National Sexual Assault Hotline

If you or someone you know has been a victim of rape please reach out for help. The act itself is traumatizing and the aftermath can be more so.

Please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. It’s confidential and free.

You can also go to their website, a link is provided below as well as in our Resources.

Rainn.org

Resources

• After 13 years, police still hunting for the East Coast Rapist
• Prince Georges County.
• Aaron Thomas sentenced to life terms for 2001 East Coast Rapist attack in Loudoun
• Alleged East Coast Rapist Aaron Thomas to Cops: What Took You So Long?
• Campaign to catch East Coast Rapist nets new clues
• East Coast Rapist
• ‘East Coast Rapist’ Arrest
• N.Va. victims describe attack by ‘East Coast Rapist’
• East Coast Rapist Pleads Guilty to Halloween Attacks
• Wiley Online Library – Sexual Deviance.
• RAINN | The nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization

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