By: Don Driggers
The New York Times has published an exclusive report detailing how a suspect was able to make a string of recent sexual assaults before being caught.
Ashley Southall and Rebecca Davis O’Brien, of The New York Times, write, “The case of a stranger sexually assaulting a woman in what was supposed to be one of the safest parts of Manhattan, at a time of heightened fear of crime, had all the elements to capture the attention of the city and become a high priority of the New York City Police Department.”
The attack in Hudson River Park received little public attention, even after the police identified the suspect as a homeless drifter named Carl Phanor. Six months later, the police said, the attacker struck again — twice — including the brutal rape of a woman earlier this month just feet from the site of the March assault, report Southall and O’Brien.
“That’s just ridiculous that this happened that many times,” said Gabrielle Sumkin, a 23-year-old human resources worker, who described to The New York Times how she had called 911 after coming across the third victim bleeding from her elbows and asking for help. “I don’t understand why they didn’t notice the problem and do something about it. It just drives the point home that women are second-class citizens in New York City”.
More than 8,600 sex crimes are reported to New York police each year write Southall and Davis O’Brien, and about one in 10 involve victims attacked by strangers. Most rape investigations revolve around the issue of consent between people who know each other. In stranger attacks, identifying a suspect and finding evidence are usually the main challenges, and such crimes command more police resources and have higher clearance rates.
The New York Times report describes how, after the first attack in March, investigators conducted a thorough search, police officials said, relying on surveillance video that showed the suspect’s movements. Investigators also tried to track him by using the victim’s phone and inspected piers by land and sea. After DNA swabbed from the first victim matched Mr. Phanor’s sample in a state database in April, investigators blasted his photo to officers’ cellphones and looked for him in homeless shelters.
They could not locate him, Chief of Detectives James W. Essig told The New York Times in an exclusive statement, perhaps because he was hiding in construction sites or was leaving the city after each attack. But they are unsure whether he ever left. Mr. Phanor’s relatives upstate told investigators that they had not seen him in many years, Mr. Essig said.
“We were hoping he would get picked up on something else, that it would hit with his print match to this,” Mr. Essig said. “But he never got picked up for anything except these three.”
The New York Times reports that investigation seemed to have gone quiet. Then, before dawn on Thursday, Oct. 6, a 48-year-old woman was walking north on a service road along the east side of Manhattan, when a man approached from behind and put her in a chokehold, the police said. She broke free, but he attacked her again; he ripped her pants and tried to assault her, but she fought him off and he escaped on a bicycle with her wallet and phone. A half-hour later, the man tried to use the credit card at a smoke shop downtown, the police said. Eleven days later, police identified the suspect as Mr. Phanor.
