Philadelphia cops identified Center City Rapist Troy Graves as a possible suspect last Sept. 18, according to court documents released late last week.

His was one of 83 names they obtained from a public database search of people with a connection to both Philadelphia and Fort Collins, Colo., the documents said.

The list was generated just six days after a DNA link was established between the cases in the two sets of cities and passed on to Fort Collins police.

Six days after that, one of Graves' neighbors phoned Fort Collins cops and told them Graves resembled the composite that had been made public and drove a car similar to one seen at some of the crime scenes, the court papers said.

However, it was seven more months before Fort Collins police questioned Graves, according to the documents.

For the first time, the newly released court papers reveal why it took so long: manpower constraints.

On Oct. 8, just four days after Colorado detectives placed Graves in a "priority one" group of suspects, Fort Collins police dismantled the task force created in August to probe the sexual assaults.

The detectives were reassigned to investigate the homicide of an 82-year-old man, and the information on Graves and the other suspects was put into central records keeping, the documents said.

Rita Davis, spokeswoman for the Fort Collins Police Department, could not be reached for comment.

Graves, 30, has pleaded guilty to murdering Wharton School student Shannon Schieber in May 1998 and to sexually assaulting 11 women in Fort Collins and Philadelphia over a four-year period.

He is serving a life sentence without parole in Colorado.

The documents revealed that the case was on hold in Colorado until January, when detectives began combing through the suspect lists again.

Graves was earmarked as one of the first "priority one" suspects to interview but it wasn't until the detective assigned to investigate Graves was put on the case full time on April 1 that he was able to follow-up with Graves.

He spoke to Officer Linda Pace in the Philadelphia Police Department's Special Victims Unit, who told him her agency had come up with two more lists containing names of people with connections to both Fort Collins and Philadelphia.

Graves was on both lists, the documents said.

On April 12, a seventh attack similar to the others occurred in Fort Collins.

Detectives then stepped up their efforts to get in touch with Graves.

On April 22, one of them left a business card at Graves' apartment. Amy Wade, his wife, called them back.

That night, her husband came in for questioning and early the next morning he was arrested and charged with the Fort Collins attacks.