L.A.’s Tattooed Rape Suspect Arrested in Iowa

A man suspected of being the tattooed rapist, who bore a teardrop-shaped tattoo under his left eye and is blamed for a series of rapes in Los Angeles and other cities in California during the 1980s, has been arrested in Iowa, authorities said Sunday.

Frank Everett Comstock, 46, was arrested in a motel in Williams by FBI agents and local sheriff’s deputies after they got a tip Saturday that he was in the small farm town, authorities said.

Comstock, who has a teardrop tattoo under his left eye, was being held in the Polk County Jail in Des Moines and was scheduled for an initial court appearance today, a spokeswoman at the FBI’s regional office in Omaha said.

The rapes began on Feb. 11, 1980, when a man attacked a disabled woman as she walked to her North Hollywood home, pulled her to a vacant lot and raped her.

Three days later, a 17-year-old hitchhiker in Los Angeles was picked up by a man who told her he owned a large apartment building and needed a manager. When the girl went with him to the site, she was forced into a construction trailer and raped by the man, who wielded a knife.

A similar scenario unfolded a month later. A young woman in Los Angeles hitchhiking to her boyfriend’s house was picked up by a man whom police suspect was Comstock, driven to a construction trailer and forced to perform sexual acts.

Comstock moved frequently after that, according to the FBI, spending time in several Florida cities as well as Chico and Fremont, Calif., before taking a job with a telephone solicitation firm in San Luis Obispo in 1987.

In January, 1988, an 18-year-old woman employed by the company was raped by a co-worker that police suspect was Comstock. The man offered her $1,000 to engage in “sensuous conversation,” lured her to an apartment to read a script and raped her.

A starkly similar rape occurred in Palm Springs on April 13, 1989, at a telephone solicitation business that employed Comstock, the FBI said.

Charles Lontor, an FBI agent in Omaha, said Comstock, a former Iowa resident, had been working in the Williams area as a corn detasseler. He said Comstock was wanted on a warrant issued in 1981 in Los Angeles charging him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.