Suspected serial rapist Aaron Thomas said he had a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality when it came to women,” prosecutor David Strollo said yesterday in New Haven, Ct., reports the Hartford Courant. Police say he climbed into the window of a woman’s New Haven apartment in 2007 and raped her while her baby slept nearby. Thomas, 39, is a suspect in a doz en sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults in four states from 1997 to 2009. He was arrested Friday after police learned that DNA taken from a cigarette he tossed the day before matched that of the man police dubbed the “East Coast Rapist.”
When Thomas was apprehended, he asked, “What took you so long to get me?” Strollo said. His public defender, Joseph Lopez, told him to wear a hat and glasses in court to avoid any identification by victims in cases that do not involve DNA. Judge Bruce Thompson set bail at $1.5 million in cash.