Denver cold case investigators have arrested a state prison inmate for the sexual assaults of a teen-age girl and a woman in separate attacks in the late 1990s.
Police also suspect that habitual criminal Michael Anthony Carey, 51, has committed several other sexual assaults and want any possible victims to come forward, said Denver Police spokesman Lt. Matt Murray.
Carey was at Sterling Correctional Facility when an arrest warrant was filed Wednesday in Denver County Court.
“We have strong reason to believe this suspect committed other crimes,” Murray said Wednesday.
In March of 2009, cold case Det. Larry Moore II reopened a 1997 rape case in which a 15-year-old girl was assaulted. A year later he investigated the assault of a female jogger. Both cases were linked by DNA.
On Dec. 1, 1997, a 15-year-old girl had just gotten off a bus near a vacant lot in the 400 block of North Lincoln Street when a man in his mid 30s offered her a ride in an old pickup truck. She refused at first but when he pulled over she climbed inside.
The man, who wore a flannel jacket and smelled like cigarettes, drove her to a parking lot, and forced her to perform a sex act. After she vomited on his lap, he gave her a napkin, shoved her out of the pickup. Then he pulled cash out of his pocket, wadded it up and threw it at her.
The girl yelled for help. Police took her green corduroy jacket, which was her boyfriend’s, and the napkin, which was from a 7-Eleven convenience store, for evidence.
Four months later, on April 2, 1998 at 5:15 a.m., a woman was jogging on the 4500 block of S. Balsam Street on her way home from a Walmart when a man drove onto a jogging path in a field towards her.
She tried to dodge the car but the man crashed into her. She was unconscious for an unknown amount of time. When she awoke, she was alone in the car with a man and started screaming. He held onto her and ordered her to perform a sex act. When she fought to get away, he threatened her with a tire iron.
In each of the assaults, the suspect told the victims where to walk after getting out of his vehicle.
Carey has a criminal record dating back to 1978 for crimes including burglary, drug dealing, assault, drunken driving and robbery. He was first arrested for indecent exposure in 1994 and was arrested twice more for the offense in 1998 and 1999. In 2000, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for drug manufacturing and assaulting police, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
