The Fairmount Park rape suspect will face new charges in three more sexual assaults, police say

Philadelphia police say the man they believe is the so-called Fairmount Park rapist is expected to be charged Wednesday with the three other previously unsolved attacks that had long been attributed to him — the latest development in the notorious crime spree that police had been working to solve for two decades.

Last week, Elias Diaz, 46, was charged with the rape and murder of Rebecca Park, a 30-year-old medical student who was assaulted and strangled while on a jog in Fairmount Park in 2003. Police have long said that forensic evidence showed that whoever killed Park also attacked three other women around Fairmount and Pennypack Parks between 2003 and 2007.

Police said Wednesday that Diaz would face new charges for those remaining crimes, including two counts of rape, one count of attempted rape, and related offenses.

Police had been looking for Diaz for months before his arrest earlier in December. Using the DNA found on the victims two decades ago, investigators had recently started using forensics analyses and genealogy experts to narrow down a family tree from which the assailant likely hailed. In April, police said, they identified Diaz as a key person of interest, but they couldn’t find him. His family in the mainland U.S. and Puerto Rico said they had no idea where he was. They had long been estranged, and some thought he was dead.

» READ MORE: How DNA technology helped police identify the alleged Fairmount Park rapist

Then, in a sudden twist of fate, Diaz was arrested earlier this month in connection with a separate, unrelated spate of crimes. Police said that, on three separate occasions in late November, he’d been riding through Pennypack Park on a bike when he slashed people with a machete. Diaz had apparently been living in the park in a makeshift homestead for an unknown length of time.

After officials took Diaz into custody, detectives realized he was the man they’d been looking for all along in connection with the older sexual assaults.

Police had long said that assailant had committed four crimes, including three within six months of each other in 2003.

In the first attack, in April of that year, police said, he raped a 21-year-old woman at knifepoint while she was on a run near Kelly Drive and Fountain Green Road.

Three months later, police said, he raped and strangled Park, who was also out on a jog on a wooded trail near her home.

Then, in October 2003, he tried to sexually assault a third woman at knifepoint on Martin Luther King Drive near Falls Bridge. But the 37-year-old woman fought him off.

Four years later, police said, Diaz grabbed a 29-year-old woman who was walking in Pennypack Park, dragged her into the bushes, then raped and robbed her.

The crimes remained unsolved for years, even though investigators said DNA from the victims showed the assaults were committed by the same man. After his arrest for the Pennypack slashings earlier this month, police said, a forensics test confirmed that Diaz’s DNA matched the DNA recovered from one of the 2003 rape victims.

Police have said that they are reevaluating other unsolved cases for potential links to Diaz, but that they are not aware of any other crimes with a DNA link to him since his last alleged rape in 2007.

Diaz was already being held without bail on the pending murder charge. As of Wednesday evening, he had not been arraigned, but prosecutors said they would ask a judge to deny him bail on his new charges, as well.