Philadelphia Inquirer
Tuesday, September 18, 2001

DNA links Center City rapist to Colo. assaults

Seven women have been attacked in Fort Collins, police say. Six assaults occurred in Phila., including Shannon Schieber's killing.

By Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. Craig R. McCoy, and Larry Fish,
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

FORT COLLINS, Colo. - DNA tests have linked Philadelphia's Center City rapist to sexual assaults on seven young women since May in this college town in the foothills of the Rockies, police here said last night.

The link to the unsolved crimes in Colorado was the first time police have tied the Center City rapist to new crimes since August 1999, when he sexually assaulted a woman near 19th and Lombard Streets.

That 1999 rape ended a two-year, six-victim run of crime in Philadelphia that included the 1998 strangulation of University of Pennsylvania graduate student Shannon Schieber, 23.

This year, more than 1,750 miles from Philadelphia, a police task force in Fort Collins began hunting for a serial sexual attacker whose pattern of assault is similar to that of the Center City predator.

Police said that the DNA match was made recently after experts in Denver compared DNA data recovered from crime scenes in Colorado and Philadelphia.

Authorities involved in the investigation in Colorado said the DNA results had been reverified after the initial match. Criminologists say DNA results are extremely reliable because of the unique imprint of each person's genetic code.

After the match surfaced, detectives from Philadelphia arrived here Saturday to begin working with Fort Collins police. Their travel was delayed by the nationwide air shutdown after last week's terrorist attacks.

"We spent Saturday, Sunday and early Monday with investigators from Pennsylvania to share information on the cases," Rita Davis, spokeswoman for the Fort Collins Police Department, said during a news conference last night.

Investigators here released a sketch of the suspect and detailed breakdown of similarities between the assaults in both cities:

Victims in Fort Collins and Center City have given similar descriptions of the attacker. He is said to be a clean-shaven man, possibly of mixed race, with a dark or olive complexion in his late 20s or early 30s.

The intruder in both cities gained entrance by removing screens to get through windows, sliding doors and unlocked doors in lower-floor apartments.

The assaults in both cities took place after midnight but before dawn, typically between 3 and 5 a.m.

The intruder here and in Philadelphia surprised his victims as they slept and then immediately blindfolded and bound them.

The sketch released by Fort Collins police is not a dead ringer for sketches produced by Philadelphia victims: The Fort Collins intruder has a narrower face and a more angular chin. However, the eyes, eyebrows and nose appear similar.

From the description provided in Fort Collins, the man known in Philadelphia as the Center City rapist has changed his look since traveling to Fort Collins.

While he was said to be rail-thin in Philadelphia, the victims in Fort Collins said he had a "box-build" physique and was slightly overweight, especially around the middle. Victims here also said he smelled strongly of cigarettes - a factor never mentioned by victims in Philadelphia.

Victims here said he had calloused hands with short, thick fingers and dirty fingernails.

Philadelphia police declined comment yesterday on the Fort Collins link.

Sylvester Schieber, the father of Shannon Schieber, said yesterday that he was not surprised the man had struck again.

"Everybody we've talked to, in the FBI, in the police force, told that once these guys get going, they don't stop," said Schieber, an economist who lives in Chevy Chase, Md. "We have heard that they go dormant for a while, but invariably, they come back."

Schieber and his wife, Vicki, have filed suit in federal court against the Philadelphia Police Department. Their lawsuit notes that two Philadelphia police officers responded to a 911 call reporting a woman screaming but left her apartment after arriving and hearing no sounds at her door. Her killer entered through a rear, sliding door.

The link in Fort Collins, Schieber said, "means that the guy is still alive. It would mean that he is continuing to operate in the pattern under which he operated in Philadelphia.

"It is a very sad situation that the man is still around, continuing to commit these crimes," he said.

Philadelphia police officials have said that the officers who responded to the call to Shannon Schieber's apartment acted properly, based on what they knew at the time.

In all, the man in Fort Collins has assaulted seven women, including two inside one apartment.

Of the six attacks, the last known in Fort Collins - a city of 125,000 about 55 miles north of Denver - took place Aug. 23, when an assailant attacked two students, 21 and 22, from Front Range Community College. He got into their ground-floor apartment through an unlocked window at 3 a.m.

His first known attack in Fort Collins was May 10, when a 20-year-old woman was assaulted in her apartment. The next came June 13 when another woman, also 20, was attacked one block way.

After the third attack 11 days later, an assault on a 26-year-old woman, police alerted the community here that a suspected serial sexual criminal was on the loose.

The man attacked once in late July, assaulting a 23-year-old woman, and then struck again twice last month. He attacked a 20-year-old woman Aug. 5 and two roommates Aug. 23.

He fled the Aug. 23 assault in a faded, light blue, 1980s four-door sedan. Left behind at the crime scene was his black baseball cap, with a Quiksilver brand logo.

At the news conference, police in Fort Collins also said that they had arrested a man in an attack that has not been linked to the pattern of assaults that began May 10. The man, Ali Harris, 32, was charged with sexual assault in connection with a May 6 attack. Police said that Harris did not fit the physical description of the serial attacker and that the method of the May 6 crime did not fit the serial pattern.

Nonetheless, they said, they had obtained a DNA sample from Harris and were awaiting the results of a comparative lab check.

Police here have said the serial attacker forced his victims to commit a sexual act but would not elaborate.

As in Philadelphia, the attacks have stirred considerable fear among young women, prompting a run on locks and pepper spray. The 11-officer Fort Collins task force reports that it has interviewed nearly 200 men and taken DNA samples from scores to rule them out as the attacker. Investigators also have collected fingerprints and shoe prints from crime scenes.

None of the victims in the Colorado attacks was able to give a detailed physical description of the suspect because all had been blindfolded.

However, police in Fort Collins have released a sketch drawn with the help of a possible eighth victim. The woman, 30, struck the intruder in the face with her son's hockey stick as he entered her home July 9. He fled. The attacker had cut through a screen on a garden-level window.

Fort Collins is the home of Colorado State University and Front Range Community College, both of which opened their doors for the fall during the week that the attacker committed his last crime.

The latest assault happened just one block off campus, said Charles Davidshofer, director of the university's counseling center. Davidshofer said school representatives afterward visited throughout the campus, explaining the situation.

The university has retrofitted windows in dorms and apartments with locking devices, so students can lock them with a pin.

John Feeley, media-relations director at Front Range Community College, in which two victims were enrolled, said the school had sponsored several sexual-assault seminars.

Although police in Fort Collins quickly picked up the unfolding pattern in their city, it took Philadelphia police months to realize that a serial rapist was at work in Center City.