NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Some neighbors considered Aaron Thomas an odd nuisance, a man who lifted weights in the front yard, parked a loud tractor-trailer in their residential neighborhood and ran or rode his bike unfathomable distances. His girlfriend’s son called him laid-back.
But authorities say the unemployed truck driver is the East Coast Rapist, suspected of terrorizing women with sexual assaults from Virginia to Rhode Island over 12 years. New Haven police said Saturday that DNA confirmed Thomas is the East Coast Rapist.
Investigators reportedly got Thomas’ DNA off a discarded cigarette.
“It’s just shocking to me,” said 15-year-old Dashawn Golding, who said his mother is Thomas’ girlfriend. “She’s crying a lot,” he said of his mother.
A woman who answered the phone where neighbors said Thomas lived with his girlfriend said she was devastated.
“I almost died,” the woman told The Associated Press before she hung up without giving her name. “I’m scared to walk out my door. I’m just as innocent as the next person.”
The woman, who said she met Thomas outside a hospital where she works, said Thomas’ 5-year-old son was crying when he learned of the charges. There was a heavy police presence Saturday as investigators searched the house, a yellow colonial with a security sign on the front lawn.
New Haven police have a warrant charging Thomas with first-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor, and he was being held in lieu of $1 million bail, Lt. Julie Johnson said. Authorities in Prince William County, Va., are charging him with being a fugitive as well as rape and abduction charges and use of a firearm while committing a felony.
Thomas tried to hang himself in his cell and was hospitalized, New Haven police Officer Joe Avery said Saturday. Thomas is expected to survive and will undergo evaluation.
The East Coast Rapist is wanted for 17 rapes and other attacks in Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island and Virginia that began in 1997. The cases were linked by DNA.
Authorities recently put up electronic billboards in the states where the attacks occurred and neighboring states. U.S. Marshal Joe Faughnan said a tip from Prince William County directed them to Thomas.
