Attention: sex crimes and robbery units. (ViCAP Alert).

Unsolved Sex Crime

The Madison, Wisconsin, Police Department requests assistance in an ongoing serial sexual assault investigation. Since the spring of 1999, nearly two dozen unsolved sexual assault attacks have occurred at southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois mall and strip mall stores and parking lots. In all cases, a lone white male stalked and attacked young white female store clerks working alone or customers and clerks as they walked to their vehicles in the late afternoon or evening hours. The suspect selected, stalked, and spoke to the victims before attacking them from behind. In many cases, he used a knife to gain control and compliance in getting victims into their cars or a store bathroom.

Crime Scenes

The suspect appears comfortable traveling long distances between attack sites and has selected victims in malls around the Madison area, as well as in the jurisdictions of Janesville, Fond du Lac, Johnson Creek, Cottage Grove, and Monona, Wisconsin, and Roscoe, Illinois. For the past 3 years, he has effected a pattern of discontinuing the attacks in Wisconsin around the month of September and returning in late January or early February. For this reason, investigators believe that he may be traveling for work or other reasons and perpetrating elsewhere.

Law enforcement officers should pay particular attention to all calls dispatched to mall and strip mall stores and parking lots between 1 p.m. and 10 p.m. In previous cases, officers received dispatches of armed robberies, domestic disturbances, suspicious person complaints, and exposure incidents, as well as sexual assaults. As a result of this initial call confusion, response sometimes was slow or given low priority, resulting in the suspect's escape and loss of evidence from the scenes. Therefore, regardless of the nature of the dispatched call, if it occurs at a mall or strip mall store in the afternoon or evening hours, responding officers should remain alert for this suspect fleeing to a nearby highway.

Officers should consider this suspect as armed and dangerous and preserve all possible evidence at the scene, including soft drink cans, cigarette butts, chewing gum, coins, videotapes, latent fingerprints on doors, and any other items of DNA or evidentiary value. Suspect DNA currently is on file in CODIS with no known identification.

Possible Suspect Information

The suspect is described as a white male, 25 to 35 years of age, 5' 7" to 5' 10" in height, with a stocky build, broad shoulders, and strong hands. He has sandy brown short hair, with no thinning or receding hairline. He has noticeably blue eyes, is clean shaven or with a five o'clock shadow and a rough complexion, and frequently wears a close-fitting baseball cap.

The suspect has fled the scenes of previous attacks in a metallic ruby red, early to mid-1990s, full-size, clean pickup truck, possibly a Chevy Silverado or Ford F-150. The truck may have a narrow midline white or silver horizontal stripe, a black toolbox with two chrome handles in the bed behind the cab, and a reddish maroon topper. He also was seen operating a full-size, clean, 1989 to 1995, gray, Ford F-150, with a gray topper and gray interior, following an attack in Illinois.

Alert to Law Enforcement

Law enforcement agencies should bring this information to the attention of all crime analysis personnel and officers investigating crimes against persons, sex crimes, and robberies. Any agency with crimes similar to these should contact Madison Police Department Detectives Maureen Wall at 608-266-4696, Mark Zwart at 608-266-5935, or Bruce Frey at 608-245-3656 or Crime Analyst Butch Rabiega of the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) at 703-632-4170 or Special Agent Gary Cramer at 703-632-4197. For a composite drawing and vehicle description, access http://www.ci.madison.wi.us/police.

Agencies that have in formation on similar cases in their areas should contact the Madison, Wisconsin, Police Department at 608-266-4696.