The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page M11

Maxwell never stopped working Maxwell himself pitched for patterns in other parts of the country and passing suggestions to the task force. Month after pursued promising to watch them die.Every tip more than 1,200 came in was followed up. The task force scoured old cases to out if the rapist had other vic- tims.They went back to the women assaulted for help to create a composite.Soon they had their sketch and posted it everywhere. Commanders assigned female of- to serve as decoys walking Rit- tenhouse Square at night.Plain- clothes sat in Center City bars.Nearly every man in the a suspect. Detectives took DNA samples from 300 men.They consulted with expert one with the Vancouver Police puzzle out the psyche.

The and Chuck Boyle place during warm gave the intruder the chance to use open windows. he do in the winter? Was he perhaps a student who came here for summer classes? They checked with local colleges for enrollment lists.Was he a worker on a ship come to port? They asked port authorities for help and turned to immigration for foreign registries. They cross-checked professional sports schedules and player rosters, looking for any correlation between crimes and games. The circus had been in town.So they contacted Ringling Bros.and Barnum Bailey in asking for lists of trainers and other agile performers who could be suspects.They did the same with the for a man both and thin enough to squeeze between burglar bars. They searched and restaurants.

were doing everything we could to catch this Piree.At one point he and Boyle became so frustrated working every possible lead that they decided they had to take a much-needed breather from the investigation. Prosecutors then picked up on their end.The investigation was racing against the statute of limitations was looming on the Philadelphia sexual assaults dating from 1997 (though there is no limit on assure they could prosecute on all the December 2001 the Philadelphia District took the unusual step of charging not a named a DNA genotype.By charging the genotype extracted from rape-scene were within the statute of limitations. just any was a case where we knew who it was before we knew who he Arlene Philadelphia assistant district attorney who prepared the arrest warrant. With the warrant and no suspect, detectives needed fresh leads. Then came a bulletin out of Fort Collins.

Ensure that the DNA is put into the FBI DNA data bank as soon as possible. Because of this likelihood of continuing to commit sexual future comparison may ultimately solve this case. FBI report On Aug.6,2001,at police headquarters in Center dispatcher Victoria doing the mundane job of answering telephone warrants, and sifting through more than 100 messages in the Crime Information Center.The usual tap of computer keyboards and friendly chatter marked a typical afternoon until Randall spotted an all-points bulletin about a series of sexual assaults in Colorado. The assailant had entered apartments through unlocked doors or windows in the early morning hours. He covered the eyes of his victims, the message forced them to perform oral sex.

Randall back to the frenzy created by the Center City Rapist, to the sketch that stared at passersby from so many downtown business windows when the hunt had been hot.Now the case was cold and detectives were looking for, any lead to revitalize it.Randall weighed the value of the information on the computer screen before her. could be in Colorado in a matter of could be our send it to our people and let them Sex crimes detective Latorre, the message.After years of dead-end was dubious. His mood he spoke with Fort Collins detectives and learned more about how the attacks in Colorado resembled those in Philadelphia. There was no need to go on hunches alone.Because the intruder had attacked again and again in the two had left physical evidence a sweat-stained baseball and saliva from which DNA could be extracted. On Sept.12,2001,a technician at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation compared the DNA patterns from the evidence in Colorado and Pennsylvania.

The DNA matched.The Center City Rapist had moved to Fort Collins. This gave detectives in both cities the biggest break in the case yet. That Boyle, sure it was just a matter of time before the Center City Rapist would be caught. was the beginning of the just narrowed the Inquirer Magazine 11 A picture of Troy Graves, who was stationed at an Air Force base north of Fort Collins, and a Philadelphia sketch of the Center City Rapist. continued on next page Philadelphia sex crime investigators (from left) Thomas McDevitt, Linda Pace and Carl Latorre helped zero in on Troy Graves.

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