Police Nab Suspect in Series of Bold Rapes

A 25-year-old San Diego pipe fitter arrested early Monday morning is suspected of being the so-called “bolder than most” serial rapist. A police detective on a stakeout apprehended the man, who carried a concealed knife, outside a National City motel.

Alvin Ray Quarles, a Paradise Hills resident, was booked on suspicion of various offenses, including two of the 15 serial rapes that began in December, 1986, and crisscrossed the metropolitan area, occurring in neighborhoods in east San Diego, Old Town, Pacific Beach and National City.

The latest assault was an attempted rape earlier this month in Old Town, when a woman and her male companion awoke and found a man inside their home, police said. The attack fit the rapist’s pattern of entering homes and assaulting victims as their husbands or boyfriends lie next to them.

Unusual Approach

“The thing that made this rapist so unusual is that he would go into a home even if a boyfriend or husband was there,” said San Diego Police Sgt. Anne O’Dell. “Usually rapists prey on women who are by themselves, but this guy didn’t do that. He went ahead and did things and that’s why we called him bolder than most rapists.”

She said the assailant would use a knife to unlock doors or windows and sneak into homes. If a woman’s husband or boyfriend was there, he sometimes would tie them up or force them to watch while the man sexually assaulted the woman.

“He’s a big number,” O’Dell said, describing how the serial rapist had terrorized women throughout the county and touched off a multijurisdictional effort to find the assailant.

In fact, police said, efforts were so intense to locate the man that officials at one time placed a San Diego police officer under surveillance as a possible suspect.

As the series of assaults continued, said O’Dell, public concern mounted. A $1,000 reward was posted and residents in the areas where the rapist had struck were warned to secure their homes.

“Sure, there was concern,” O’Dell said. “It was voiced to officers who worked patrols and officers who worked the police storefronts.”

Quarles was booked on suspicion of two counts of forcible rape, one count of forced oral copulation, three counts of first-degree burglary, three counts of robbery, one count of carrying a concealed weapon, one count of displaying a weapon in an angry manner, and one count of false imprisonment.

He was being held in County Jail on $125,000 bail.

O’Dell said police do not want to release a photograph of the man until all the victims in the other sexual assaults have a chance to view him in a police lineup during the next two days.

“The investigation will be continuing, which could lead to additional charges and the cancellation of other cases,” she said.

Quarles was arrested shortly before 5 a.m. outside the Nite Lite Motel on Roosevelt Avenue in National City.

National City police spokesman Brian Monahan said an undercover detective had the motel under surveillance because a woman had been raped there.

“We didn’t know for sure he was going to be there,” Monahan said. “We just took a wild guess. The suspect had been going to a lot of motels and one woman was raped there.

“So the detective just happened to be in the right place.”

The detective saw Quarles walking outside the motel and radioed for a patrol unit to stop him. Monahan said that, when police began questioning Quarles, they found a knife hidden in his pants behind his back.

An hour before his arrest, Quarles allegedly robbed two elderly female guests at the Lamplighter Inn Motel on El Cajon Boulevard in San Diego, police said.