Police: Rape suspect found victims on Craigslist

A trucker who traveled the East Coast and contacted women on Craigslist is a suspect in three metro Atlanta rapes, and authorities say the man might have attacked other women from Florida to New England.

Calvin Louis Gene, 26, was arrested Dec. 26 by authorities in Douglas County, according to the sheriff's office there. On Thursday, the Dallas man was still in the county jail, being held without bond on rape and armed robbery charges, said Douglas Sheriff's Lt. Bruce Ferguson.

The hunt for Gene began after a woman in Douglas County contacted the sheriff saying she'd been attacked by a man just after midnight on Sept. 5.

The man allegedly knocked on her door, aimed a gun at her face and forced his way inside, raped her and then took money, Ferguson told the AJC.

After Douglas investigators learned of a similar attack on two female roommates in DeKalb County just 12 hours after the first rape, they began linking Gene to the crime, Ferguson said.

Gene was arrested by DeKalb police the morning of the reported attack on the two females. An officer who responded to a sexual assault complaint by two women at an apartment complex off I-85 near Spaghetti Junction found him on the ground with a gunshot wound to his chest, according to a police incident report.

Gene told police he was shot while there to buy televisions. He was sent to the hospital, but an officer noted that he matched the description of the alleged rapist and turned the case over to the major felony investigations unit.

"Our detectives are looking at Gene as a possible person of interest in the sexual assault," DeKalb police spokeswoman Mekka Parish told the AJC Thursday. She added that DeKalb detectives were working with investigators in Douglas County.

Ferguson, of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, said Gene fits the profile of a serial rapist, so authorities are looking for other victims.

There could be women in other states, since Gene made deliveries from Florida to Boston, Ferguson said: "For him to do this twice, in a 12-hour period, it's probably not his first" time.

Authorities believe Gene found women and arranged meetings with them on Craigslist. The Douglas County woman was advertising herself on the website as a body masseuse, Ferguson said, and the two women in DeKalb also had Craigslist ads.

Ferguson said serial rapists who select victims at random are potentially lethal predators. "First, they'll be doing Peeping Tom," he said. Next comes rape, and "before you know it, they'll be killing people. These people are a different breed."