The suspected East Coast Rapist claimed he had “a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” personality toward women, a prosecutor said in court Monday.
Aaron Thomas, 39, of New Haven, Conn., was arrested after a tip from Prince George’s County broke open the case that has dogged detectives up and down the coast for 12 years.
When police finally put the handcuffs on Thomas, he asked what took them so long, authorities said.
Thomas is suspected in 17 attacks from Virginia to Rhode Island, including the sexual assault of two trick-or-treating girls in Prince William County on Halloween 2009.
“The predator became the prey,” acting Prince George’s County police chief Mark Magaw said.
The break in the case came Feb. 28 after investigators launched a Web site and digital billboard campaign, as reported by The Washington Examiner and other news media outlets.
That day, a person from Prince George’s County contacted authorities to say that Thomas was the East Coast Rapist, police said. Thomas was already on a list of possible suspects that had been generated from a database containing millions of records.
U.S. Marshals deputies and police officers from the D.C. area were sent to New Haven to help keep surveillance on Thomas, an unemployed truck driver.
Law enforcement sources told The Examiner that Thomas was acting cautiously, constantly turning to see whether he was being followed. He climbed over fences and entered his home through the back door to shake anyone who may have been tailing him.
On Thursday, Thomas made a critical error. While waiting to go into court for an unrelated matter, investigators watched as he took a final puff on a cigarette and threw it away.
The investigators picked up the cigarette and rushed it to a lab. Technicians worked through the night to determine that the DNA from the cigarette matched that from evidence taken from more than a dozen crime scenes on the Eastern seaboard.
Around noon Friday, police swooped in and arrested Thomas after he exited a bus near his home in New Haven.
“Why haven’t you picked me up sooner?” Thomas asked, according to authorities.
The judge ordered him held on a $1.5 million Monday. Thomas’ public defender didn’t have any comment afterward.
Prince William County prosecutor Paul Ebert and Fairfax County Police detective John Kelly said the case could have been solved years ago if Virginia police had been allowed to use what is called “familial DNA” searching, which can track down suspects through a family connection.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
