MEMPHIS, Tenn. — July seemed to be a busy month for a suspect police are still looking for. Four linked cases happened last July, three in the Woodchase Apartment Complex in Cordova.
Memphis Police said it took a while to notice the links between attacks that occurred over a year, never mind the fact that three of them happened in the same apartment community.
Police didn’t know, so many Woodchase Apartment residents had no idea it was on their street.
“The apartments here haven’t told us anything. I found out on the news our apartment complex was one of them,” Woodchase Apartments resident Savannah Moore said.
After repeated requests, we were able to get the dates of the crimes, from burglaries to forcible rapes.
It started September 2014 at the Edgewater Apartments where a woman found a man standing in her bedroom door asking for someone she didn’t know named Marcus. The intruder sexually assaulted her and even took photos.
Christmas Eve 2014 at the Country Squire Apartments, a 22-year-old woman was robbed. There was another attack at a complex on March 22, but it was last July when things heated up.
On July 15, 2015, the criminal hit twice at the Lincoln at Wolfchase Apartments then down the street at Woodchase Apartments the same night.
One woman was awaken from her sleep to a man standing over her with a gun asking for “Michael.” He went through her possessions and left with her purse.
It would happen two more times at Woodchase Apartments, July 16 ad 21 on the same street, women finding their homes burglarized and one woman forcibly raped.
“Something this serious you would at least think they would have made it known before now,” Moore said.
Yet it wasn’t until January 3, 2016, that police connected the dots.
“As soon as we see a situation, as I stated, that have similar patterns or M-Os, similar situations within the crime itself that alerts us, that’s when we begin to start alerting the public,” Memphis Police Deputy Chief Mike Ryall said.
“I was surprised it has taken this long to at least tell anybody about it,” Moore said.
Police said because many of the crimes included burglaries, it was a while before they could be connected. They still can’t say with certainty that the same person is responsible, but they alerted the public as a precaution.