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Mort de Amadou Diallo à New York City

Kit R. Roane
News of Rapes Fuels Fear and Anger

New York Times — February 17, 1999

Grecia Chavez confronts many fears in her life: worries about gangs on the corners, muggings at night, the walk her 11-year-old son must take home from school. But she was not prepared for the news that two women had been raped early Sunday near her Washington Heights home by a man the police believe has attacked 43 other women over the last eight years.

« Now I'm afraid to go out at night or take the elevator when I come home, and I always want someone to come in my building with me, » said Mrs. Chavez, who is 38. «The police never told us about him before. »

Residents say the series of attacks on women « in the Bronx and northern Manhattan, and a single one in Mount Vernon in Westchester County — were not widely publicized until the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, in the Bronx on Feb. 4. The officers who killed Diallo were searching for the rapist.

In these relatively poor minority neighborhoods, places where residents are already angered by the killing of Diallo, an unarmed black man, the concern that the Police Department and the news media may have ignored a rape pattern for years has deepened suspicions that their neighborhoods do not matter.

« If a white woman on the East Side gets pushed down on the street and is nearly raped, the police are on it and it's all over the TV, » said Jennie Williams, a community advocate in West Harlem. "When we have 15-year-old girls beaten and raped, nobody comes to do anything. »

In the Soundview section of the Bronx, where several of the rapes and the shooting of Diallo occurred, there was equal skepticism of the publicity now surrounding the rapes.

« It's just strange that there was no dissemination of information on it in the community prior to the shooting incident, » said Francisco Gonzalez, district manager of Community Board 9 in Soundview. "The fact that they are doing it now, because of the outcry of people in the neighborhood about the shooting, has the semblance of public relations at this point."

Marilyn Mode, a spokeswoman for the Police Department, denied yesterday that officers had ignored the rape pattern and said it was untrue that recent news briefings were meant to divert attention from the Diallo shooting.

« We put this rape pattern together in the spring of 1997, and since then the sketch has been put out in the community, » she said, adding that Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani also announced a $10,000 reward for the rapist's capture last December.

« Our special victims squad has been very proactive on this case and our records show that the sketch has been widely distributed," she added.

Local newspapers and television newscasts have covered the rapes from time to time since 1997. Even so, Ms. Williams said that the police interest and news coverage had paled in comparison to other well-known crime patterns in more affluent areas of the city, like the attacks by the East Side rapist.

« This is just game-playing now, pulling the strings, » she said.

The police said the serial rapist who attacked in Washington Heights on Sunday has been one of the most active in the city. But the police said they were able to connect the rapes only in the spring of 1997, when they could match DNA samples from about half of the attacks.

In most of the cases, the police say, the man has worn a ski mask or bandanna over his face, and has attacked at night or in the early morning. Although usually picking victims who are alone, in some instances he has attacked two or three women at the same time. He nearly always follows his target into a lobby or elevator before showing a black or silver handgun, the police said. He usually tells the women to face a wall, then rapes and robs them.

In the most recent case, the police said, the serial rapist attacked two women, ages 22 and 25, who were going home from a club around 5:30 A.M. The police said he apparently waited for their dates to drive away from a building on St. Nicholas Avenue between 165th and 170th Streets, before sneaking up behind them and forcing them into an elevator. He then sexually assaulted and robbed the women after stopping the elevator, the police said.

It was at least the fifth time the rapist had attacked in Washington Heights and other parts of Harlem since 1995, according to police records. Along St. Nicholas Avenue, women said they were altering their daily rituals in response to the news.

Maria Recio, 29, who was strolling with Mrs. Chavez, the mother of an 11-year-old, said she had stopped going to the store at night even if she desperately needed milk or bread.

« Now every woman in Washington Heights is worried, » Mercedes Manon, 49, said. « I've got two girls, and I've told them to be very careful of everyone they see. »

Asked if she thought the police would catch the rapist, she said: "We are Spanish people, poor people. They might care if this was the Upper West Side."