Jogging paths: Hunting grounds for rapists?

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

A serial rapist is suspected of assaulting at least four different women in Orange County, Fla., since the October 2006 attack of the 32-year-old wife of a police officer. The victim was attacked while jogging and saved by a passerby who intervened. Other female joggers in this same area have been attacked in a similar manner by their assailant, a man, now referred to as the “East Side Rapist” who steps from the nearby woods, undergrowth or shadows to assault his victims. This rapist is also suspected in the assault and murder of 26-year-old Florida graduate student Nicole Ganguzza, whose body was found in a wooded area near the park where she went for a run early last month.

Ganguzza was dragged by her killer into the woods from the jogging trail.  Police have interviewed many of the people who live in homeless camps in the nearby woods, believing that Ganguzza’s killer knows the local area well and probably stalked the jogging trail for potential victims. Although investigators recently arrested a man in a 2007 rape case that occurred in the same general area where Ganguzza was murdered, they cannot currently link him to the other assaults.

Depending on which statistics you believe, there were between 100,000 and 250,000 reported rapes in the U.S. last year. Although terrible in itself, this figure is only believed to reflect approximately 16 percent of the total rapes that actually took place in the same time period.  The challenge for investigators in the “East Side Rapist” investigation is determining if they have a single serial rapist or multiple assailants operating in the same area, perhaps copy cats covering up their crimes by trying to suggest that all of the assaults were the work of only one rapist. On July 7, a 24-year-old female college student identified only as Taina was the latest victim of an attempted assault as she ran along a road just two miles from where Ganguzza was murdered.

Taina, who is hearing impaired, was running with her dog when attacked this past Monday evening. As her assailant, described as a 5’10” dark-skinned Hispanic male, attacked her, ripping her clothing as she literally fought for her life, her dog broke free and ran home. Taina believes her cries for help may have distracted her attacker long enough for her to momentarily push her attacker away, thereby allowing her, like her dog, to run home.

Just like many other similar victims of jogging path rapists across the country, Taina did not believe it could happen to her. Now she, like other victims, knows that anyone can become the victim of a determined assailant who is out looking, out hunting for a new victim. Orange County authorities arrested a man last month in a year-old rape case, but they have yet to determine if their suspect is responsible for other similar attacks. Florida, of course, is not alone in such attacks.

Most will remember the so-called “Central Park Rapist” believed responsible for the 1989 horrific attack on a then 28-year-old female investment banker jogging in Central Park, New York City.  In that case the victim, who was running with a radio headset, apparently never knew what hit her. Whether you believe she was attacked by just one person or a gang of assailants, what is undeniable is that the victim was attacked and brutalized to the extent that she lost three-quarters of her blood and was left for dead before her assailant(s) fled. 

Buffalo, N.Y. was haunted by the “Bike Path Rapist,” eventually identified as Altemio Sanchez, who is believed to have begun attacking women in that city as early as 1977 when he was just 19 years old. He is thought to have raped at least 16 females and murdered three others in his reign of terror that lasted three decades. In Salem, Ore., a woman raped 22 years ago by Richard Troy Gillmore, the so-called “Jogger Rapist,” a man who admitted to sexually assaulting at least seven other women in the 70s and 80s, testified before a parole board that Gillmore continued to pose a risk to the community and should not be released on parole.

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