Torturer-Rapist At Large Near Columbia University

By Jeralyn, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 08:16:58 PM EST
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Update (4/20): A suspect, a homeless ex-offender, has been arrested.

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A torturer-rapist is at large in New York City. If you're a woman near Columbia, don't be walking around alone until he's caught.

It was an ordeal that lasted 19 hours. In that span, a man bound a Columbia University graduate student in her apartment, raped her, doused her with hot water and bleach, slit her eyelids and finally set a fire before fleeing, police said.

How he got into her apartment:

More....

Witnesses told police they had spotted the attacker loitering around the victim's building on the night of the attack. At about 9:30 p.m., he slipped inside, got on an elevator with her and pushed a button for a different floor than hers, police said.

He followed her out of the elevator and pretended like he was lost, police said. Then he followed her to her apartment door and forced his way inside, where he beat her.

Over the next several hours, he raped her on her futon bed, tied her up with computer cables, force fed her drugs and alcohol and used a knife to slit her eyelids, police said.

Sketch artist picture of the suspect here.

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Torturer-Rapist At Large Near Columbia University | 4 comments (4 topical)

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Thanks, Jeralyn (none / 0) (#1)
by conchita on Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 10:48:32 PM EST

I don't live uptown but this is good to know.

Disturbing (none / 0) (#2)
by LarryE on Fri Apr 20, 2007 at 12:28:26 AM EST

I find this even more disturbing, more upsetting, than Virginia Tech. That, at least, can be ascribed to, as I called him, "a tormented, twisted soul who could no longer bear the weight of his own demons."

This bears the marks not of madness but of malice, not of insanity but inhumanity - an act not of furiously lashing out at imagined oppressors but of coldly calculated infliction of suffering and pain.

Intellectually I know such people exist, I know such cruelty exists and even abounds in some places and some conflicts. But emotionally I still have trouble grasping it, of fully acknowledging it. Perhaps it could be best said that I know it exists, but I don't want to know, I wish I did not know, did not have to know.

My own shortcomings in dealing with reality, I suppose. But it helps keep me sane.

Thank goodness for New York's handgun ban (none / 0) (#3)
by roy on Fri Apr 20, 2007 at 09:17:36 AM EST

Police say they've caught the guy - (none / 0) (#4)
by scribe on Fri Apr 20, 2007 at 09:45:40 AM EST

and he made the front page of the Daily News.

Whether he's the guy or not, they grabbed someone and pinned it on him. We'll see.