Update 10:30 a.m. Saturday
The man arrested and charged in the case of the East Coast Rapist used to live in Dale City.
Rental records show 49-year-old Aaron H. Thomas lived on Bonita Court, off Brooke Drive in the Birchdale section of Dale City from 2000 until 2007.
Records also show he attended school in Prince Georges County, and The Washington Post reported Friday Thomas still has family who live in the Berryville, Va. area.
Thomas was arrested Friday afternoon in Connecticut after an investigator observed him smoking a cigarette. Suspicious, police picked up that cigarette but and swabbed it for DNA, the Post reported.
That same DNA was later matched to DNA collected at some of the 17 rapes Thomas has been connected to.
Original Post 4:20 p.m.
TBD reports a suspect in the East Coast Rapist case has been arrested in Connecticut.
The suspect’s name has not been released, but he was taken into custody about 3 p.m. Friday, TBD.com reports.
Word of the arrest come the same week as authorities launched a digital billboard campaign looking for clues into the case.
Investigators also launched a website detailing each attack the tied to the suspected rapist over the past 14 years.
The latest attack was reported on Halloween night 2009, when three teenage girls were walking home from a night of trick-or-treating when a man approached them with a gun, raped two of them while the other looked on.
Police have tied the rapist to 17 attacks on women along the east coast.
The attacks began in Maryland in 1997.
