BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
BURLINGTON -- Detectives believe the same man who raped a woman last month in Fort Wright struck again early Sunday in Burlington.
Investigators have linked the earlier attack with the rape of a 55-year-old woman in her bedroom on Curley Court. In both, the man was inside the homes when the women returned home. There are other similarities too, said Boone County Police Detective Tracy Watson, but she declined to elaborate on them, for fear doing so would jeopardize the investigation.
"We don't want him knowing how much we know," she said.
In the attack shortly after midnight Sunday, the woman had returned to her Curley Court house and talked with a friend in the living room about 15 minutes before the friend left, Detective Watson said. All the while, the man was in the house waiting.
The woman turned off the lights, went upstairs to her bedroom and changed into her pajamas, the detective said. She then went into the bathroom that adjoins her bedroom to wash her face before bed, Detective Watson said.
"That's when he appeared in the doorway," she said.
He tied the woman up, but she was able to escape after he left. She fled to her son's house in Florence, where they called 911 at 12:33 a.m.
Sometime before the attack, another burglary took place on Curley Court. In the other one, someone broke into the house and took a gun, as well as some other items. No one was home.
Dan Kreinest, acting chief of the Fort Wright Police Department, said that after comparing notes, he believes the man intended to rape someone in the first Curley Court break-in too, but just found no one home.
The Fort Wright rape took place Sept. 17 on Henry Clay Avenue. In that one, the man came up behind the woman, who was pregnant, and they struggled before he assaulted her. Afterward, the intruder told the woman not to move and fled. She went to a neighbor's house and called police.
There are connections between the two locations, Detective Watson said.
Detectives ask that anyone with information about the burglaries or rapes call them at 334-2120.
