After being on the run for more than four decades, a convicted rapist from Connecticut was nabbed in Florida; federal authorities stated Thursday.
According to federal prosecutors, the 76-year-old man identified as Douglas E. Bennett assumed the identity of a five-year-old boy who died back in 1945, following his disappearance after he lost an appeal and was convicted of rape, robbery, and kidnapping in 1957.
The fugitive was arrested on Wednesday in Clearwater, Florida, and was charged with aggravated identity theft for 44 years and passport fraud.
Bennett was a former drama instructor in Mount Holyoke who was sentenced to spend nine to 18 years in prison for an attack he made on a 22-year-old woman inside her home in Wethersfield on Valentine's Day of 1974.
During the trial, Bennett pleaded not guilty and insisted on his innocence. F. Lee Bailey, one of his attorneys back then, claimed that Bennett would be cleared of the charges given the new evidence found and a result of a polygraph test, The New York Post reported.
Prosecutors claimed that Bennett marched into the house of the woman looking for her father, wearing a mask and with a gun on him. Afterwhich, Bennett robbed the woman, forced her outside the house, and then raped her.
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It was also stated that Bennett sexually assaulted the woman the second time inside a car. Bennet reportedly had an accomplice during the second incident who was never charged for the crime.
In 1975, Bennett was convicted of all charges. The following year, he brought the appeal to the Supreme Court. However, the high court upheld his previous conviction.
Bennet then became a fugitive, and in 1977, he took the identity of a boy who died decades before his conviction.
While processing to renew the passport he owned under the name of the boy whose identity he has assumed, Bennett was identified by federal officers in 2016, Fox News reported.
On Wednesday, it was confirmed that Bennett was the same man convicted in the 1975 rape case in Connecticut after his fingerprints matched with the fugitive. Bennett also owned a driver's license registered in Florida bearing his photograph and false information.
If convicted of the new charges, Bennett is looking at a possible 12 years in federal prison.
Meanwhile, one of the fugitive's Florida neighbors stated that he was stunned by the events that took place and never thought that he was living next door to a convicted rapist.
In an interview, John Ouimette, a resident of Clearwater, expressed how horrified and surprised he was by the incident. He claimed that he used to only hear about this stuff in a book, a movie, or the TV and that he never thought he would witness something as sinister as the crime firsthand, MSN reported.
Moreover, another neighbor, Vince Segura, stated that he knew Bennett as a sailor who has traveled around the world. Segura added that the events scared him and hoped that justice was served a long time ago.
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