Suspect in 3 Sex Attacks Is Arrested : Crime: A man, 38, who police say recently lived in his car in Ojai, is held in connection with assaults on elderly women there and in Ventura.

Law enforcement officials on Thursday announced the arrest of a jobless construction worker who detectives believe sexually attacked three elderly women and terrorized residents of Ventura and Ojai throughout the summer.

Flanked by Ventura Police Chief Richard Thomas and Ventura County Undersheriff Richard Bryce, Police Sgt. Gary McCaskill said the arrest of Peter A. Stocks, 38, late Wednesday would relieve the senior community and safeguard elderly women from further harm.

“This guy is so dangerous, we truly are fortunate to get him off the street before he was able to assault any more citizens,” McCaskill said.

The arrest brings to a close the second high-profile string of sexual attacks involving Ojai, a community haunted by a series of sex-related attacks between late 1993 and last September, police and residents said.

“I can’t believe it,’ said Ruth Mathews, president of the company that manages Taormina House, an Ojai retirement community where one of the victims lives.

“Everybody here is spending so much money getting their doors locked and making their windows lock,” Mathews said. “People have been bunking up together to keep safe. This is wonderful news.”

Police believe Stocks is responsible for three early-morning attacks in Ojai and Ventura, beginning with the June sexual assault of a 76-year-old woman who lives alone in an east Ventura mobile home park.

In each case, police say, the assailant entered the homes through an open door or window.

On July 13, an intruder bound and assaulted an 89-year-old resident of the Taormina House. The woman was tied up for more than 12 hours before a neighbor found her, police said. She spent weeks recovering in a hospital bed.

Two days later, Stocks was cited by Ventura police for speeding on the Ventura Freeway, according to court records. He was let go and told to appear in court Sept. 11.

“We knew that he had gotten a ticket,” Ventura Police Lt. Mike Tracy said Thursday. “But he wasn’t a suspect at that time.”

After the third assault, which involved a 70-year-old woman at a Ventura mobile home park Aug. 1, investigators realized they probably were dealing with a serial criminal.

Information gleaned from the three victims and outside sources led detectives to Stocks, a longtime Ventura County resident who most recently lived in his car in the Ojai area, Thomas said at a news conference Thursday.

“He was under intensive surveillance for the past 10 days, while we were trying to uncover additional evidence and protect the community,” Thomas said.

At least 18 detectives from the Ventura police and county sheriff’s departments spent weeks profiling the suspect before he was taken into custody at an Ojai market late Wednesday, police said.

Under questioning by detectives, Stocks “made some admissions concerning this crime,” said Thomas, who declined to elaborate. He has never been convicted of a sex-related crime, but was arrested in 1977 on suspicion of burglary, McCaskill said.

Stocks is not accused of raping any of the three victims, but he will be arraigned today in Ventura County Municipal Court on six felony counts, including one allegation that he sexually battered the 89-year-old Ojai woman.

He is being held in Ventura County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.

The string of sexual assaults in Ventura and Ojai came less than a year after the much-publicized attacks by the so-called Ojai Rapist, who terrorized women throughout the Ojai Valley over 10 months ending last September.

Ojai area residents were so fearful of that suspect that they organized emotional town hall meetings and plastered “wanted” posters across store windows throughout the valley.

Under intense pressure to make an arrest in that case, investigators early this year jailed an innocent man for a week.

Four months later another man, twice-convicted prowler Kevin Malone, said he was the rapist. But two weeks ago Malone, also 38, asked a Superior Court judge to withdraw his guilty pleas to eight counts.

A decision on that request is expected from Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr. on Wednesday.