Philadelphia Inquirer
Saturday, July 26, 2003

Two Rapes in Park Linked

Police link two rapes in park. April attack had not been publicized

By Thomas J. Gibbons Jr.
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Police acknowledged yesterday that the rapist who attacked and killed jogger Rebecca Park in West Fairmount Park two weeks ago is the same rapist whose April 30 attack on another Fairmount Park runner went unreported to the public.

DNA evidence definitively linked Park's rape and strangulation to the man who raped a 21-year-old woman who had been jogging on Kelly Drive at Fountain Green Drive.

Police yesterday released two similar composite drawings, one of a man wanted for questioning in the Park case and another of the Kelly Drive attacker. Investigators emphasized that the man sought in the Park case is not a suspect, though his features somewhat resemble those of the other drawing.

Park, 30, a fourth-year medical student, was last heard from about 4 p.m. on July 13, when she set out alone for a jog along trails in the West Fairmount Park area near Conshohocken Avenue. Her partially clad body was found July 17, about 40 feet from the trail, face down in a wooded area.

Police did not confirm that she had been raped until yesterday, saying DNA from semen found on her body matched that from the April 30 attack.

A third Fairmount Park rape, of a 23-year-old woman on Nov. 16 along Forbidden Drive near Bells Mill Road, has been scrutinized by investigators. Police said they have no physical evidence to link that attack to the other two.

Capt. John Darby, head of the Special Victims Unit, said the April attack on Kelly Drive occurred about 10:30 p.m., not far from the spectator stands on the river. The site is about a mile and a half, and across the Schuylkill, from the heavily wooded area where Park's remains were found, off the 3500 block of Conshohocken Avenue.

Darby said the woman in the April attack was jogging when she was approached by a man on foot, wielding a knife. He "forced her off of the drive alongside the river, and she was sexually assaulted," he said.

The man then escaped on a dark-colored bicycle.

"We're considering this particular individual as the suspect in both [attacks]," Darby said.

That rape was never publicized and a police composite was never released because the "Special Victims Unit felt that public release of the composite would have a limited impact" and might jeopardize the investigation, said Inspector William Colarulo, commander of the Public Affairs Unit.

Capt. Charles Bloom of the Homicide Unit described the attacker as being in his early 20s with a light-olive complexion, medium build, and short curly black hair. He is about 6 feet tall, weighs 175 pounds, and has a slight mustache.

Bloom addressed reporters at the afternoon briefing, crowded with media, along with Darby.

The links between the cases provoked immediate controversy in the Police Department because a police spokesman said the April 30 rape on Kelly Drive was not forwarded to the Public Affairs unit and was therefore not released to the media.

Darby, at the news conference, said, however, that the police media department had been notified.

"There was a composite [sketch] developed and that information was sent out to our Public Affairs Office, to the media," Darby said. Later in the briefing, Darby said the composite was also given to all officers who patrol that section of Fairmount Park.

"We had officers in the area looking out for this particular individual," Darby asserted.

In a statement, Colarulo disagreed that his office was notified. He said that a composite sketch was created and distributed to police in the Kelly Drive area, but that his unit was not alerted.

"Based on the time the sexual assault occurred . . . the Special Victims Unit felt that public release of the composite would have a limited impact," he said. "In addition, at that point the Special Victims Unit was following down substantial leads regarding the rape at Kelly Drive and Fountain Drive, so they felt that it was not advantageous to release it to the public, for to do so may have jeopardized the investigation.

"There are numerous violent crimes that occur throughout the city, but unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to release public information on all."

Asked if police now had another serial rapist on their hands, similar to the attacks in Center City in the late 1990s by Troy Graves that included the 1998 murder of Wharton student Shannon Schieber, Bloom responded: "I don't know if I'm prepared to call him a serial rapist at this point; he may well be, but we're not a hundred percent sure."

"Same old crap" was how Sylvester Schieber, father of Shannon Schieber, responded to news that city police failed to publicize the April 30 rape.

"It's exactly the same old story. People need to know when they're in danger," Schieber said by phone from his home in Chevy Chase, Md.

Anyone with any information on any of the three cases is asked to call the Homicide Unit at 215-686-3335.