In a brief, rambling letter that investigators say Troy Graves wrote to police before his arrest in Colorado, he disparages his parents, says he wanted to get caught, complains of loneliness, and says he did not kill Wharton student Shannon Schieber.

"someone else was in that 2nd story apartment that night because i didnt kill her," the letter says. "she was very much alive when i left but theres no arguing that i suppose another state another time."

Police in Fort Collins, Colo., received the letter on Sept. 26, soon after DNA evidence had shown that the Center City rapist was the man behind a series of attacks in Colorado.

"i admit i want to get caught i dont like what i do," says the letter, which was released yesterday.

Graves, 30, a former Philadelphia resident, pleaded guilty Friday to assaults on eight women in Fort Collins during the last two years. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Prosecutors here are working on a similar deal in connection with the murder of Schieber, a graduate student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and with the sexual assaults of five other women between June 1997 and August 1999.

Graves, who moved to Fort Collins after joining the Air Force in 1999, could return to Philadelphia this week.

Yesterday, the Larimer County District Attorney's Office released the letter with 400 pages of documents that detail the case against Graves in Colorado.

The one-page, anonymous letter was typed on a computer in mostly lowercase letters with no punctuation and some misspellings.

It provides details of seven Fort Collins assaults and assigns a number to each victim.

"1 oral she had a useless cat and i took some money..."

The letter says cats "watch me climb in and run and hide without making a sound... where dogs have had me turn around and not turn back..." In four of the attacks, the letter notes, the victims had cats.

The descriptions of some attacks are graphic, using crude language.

The letter makes reference to the attack on Schieber, 23, who was assaulted and murdered in her Center City apartment in May 1998.

"lets not talk about Philadelphia," the letter says. "i dont miss it i dont know how i even ended up there temple is overated..."

The writer says nothing about the other attacks here, but he does give insight about himself.

"i cant talk to anyone it gets lonely i just can never find anywhere or anyone to go for help," the letter says, adding, "my dog helps a little shes good company..."

In an apparent reference to his motivation for attacking the women, the letter says: "i think it was the catholic schools or my bitch mother and womanizing father or just any high school in the 90s depression and the want to die i just dont have the courage yet but am getting paranoid."

During an interview with an Inquirer reporter last month, Graves' mother, Michal Graves, said she could not imagine her son doing such things and apologized to the Schieber family. She could not be reached for comment yesterday; Graves' father died last year.

Included in the documents released yesterday are 14 pages of narration that give a detailed description of the Fort Collins attacks and how Graves alternately threatened to hurt the victims if they did not cooperate and sweet-talked them when they did what he wanted.

"Oh, you're beautiful," he told the first victim in Colorado after threatening her with a sharp object. The victim told police that he threatened, "I will kill you," but that he later said, "I wish we could have met under different circumstances."

The victims' descriptions of the attacks mirror the one-sentence summaries of each assault in the letter.

The letter said the second victim thought she was being attacked by her boyfriend. That victim told police she thought her ex-boyfriend attacked her, according to the documents released yesterday.

Many of the victims told police the attacker assured them he would not rape them as he sexually assaulted them in other ways. He often whispered to them during the attacks and spoke to them gently, they reported. One woman said he leaned down as if he were smelling her neck and hair.

Before he left, the records show, the assailant cleaned up and took towels and other things that might have contained semen.

The letter also said, "im sorry but i cant let you catch me yet not in Colorado i dont even like it here im not a fan of cold weather..."

On Friday, however, Graves worked a deal with Larimer County prosecutors that is contingent upon him serving his life sentence in Colorado. The deal is also contingent upon making sure Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham does not seek the death penalty for Schieber's murder.

Sources close to the case said Graves fears capital punishment, serving time on death row or in one of Pennsylvania's tougher prisons such as Graterford in Montgomery County.

In Colorado, Graves is likely to serve his time in a maximum-security prison.