Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 28, 1994 TAG: 9403280062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SACRAMENTO, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium
But who is Melvin Carter, the serial rapist of at least 100 women, by his own count, who so focused one state's attention on where it places parolees?
Carter, 49, who has served less than half his original 25-year prison sentence and is now living in a two-bedroom bungalow in a forest prison camp, grew to manhood with a profound hatred of women, according to a confidential Alameda County probation assessment obtained by The Associated Press.
"While he has dated `a few' women during his adulthood, he has never had a close or satisfying relationship with a woman and he has never had sexual contact with any woman he has dated," the document said.
Carter had an unhappy childhood, tormented by a stern mother he says humiliated his passive father in domestic battles. Carter believes the hostility he holds for his mother caused him to rape repeatedly, said the court-ordered study.
Carter has said he assaulted women almost monthly for 10 years. Dubbed the "College Terrace Rapist," for a Palo Alto neighborhood near Stanford University, Carter never varied his methods, investigators say.
He stalked young women who lived alone near college campuses. Wearing surgical gloves and carrying a knife, he entered the dwellings after the victims had gone to bed. Before creeping into the bedrooms, he cut phone and electrical wires.
"Victim would awake to find defendant on top of her with a knife at her throat," said a district attorney's report.
Carter was captured in 1980 and eventually convicted of 23 crimes, including rape, assault, burglary and attempt to commit burglary.
In the mid-1970s, rape investigators in the San Francisco Bay area began noticing common elements and started trading information. Gradually, crimes as far back as 1971 were clearly tied to the same rapist.
No charges were filed in many of the cases because legal deadlines had passed, prosecutors said.
The break came when Carter was stopped and interrogated as a suspected prowler in Palo Alto. Authorities routinely fed his background into their College Terrace Rapist file and found remarkable matches with parts of a profile developed by police psychiatrists.
At his sentencing in March 1982, Carter confessed to some 100 rapes. But last month, prison officials realized they had no choice but to release Carter: His good behavior had already shaved off one-third of his 25-year sentence and a subsequent change in state law boosted good-time and work-time credits to half the time off.
Carter was originally scheduled for release in Hayward, conforming to a state law requiring release in the county of conviction. But protests in Alameda County prompted Gov. Pete Wilson to order him sent "out in the wilderness someplace," and Carter was secretly placed in the bungalow at the Devil's Garden Conservation Camp, 400 miles northeast of San Francisco.
by CNB