Suspect Charged in Serial Rape Case

From the smallest of clues--a 7-month-old parking ticket--investigators searching for a suspected serial rapist targeting teenage girls in Orange County followed a trail that led them Tuesday to charge a Chino Hills building contractor with 23 counts of sexual assault.

Steven Morales, 32, is suspected in at least seven rapes over an eight-month period, sexually assaulting girls as young as 13 in upscale neighborhoods of Orange County, police said.

The break in the case came when detectives pinpointed Morales to the area of a rape in Seal Beach. They discovered that his car received a parking citation last November about the same hour a woman was raped at her home two blocks away, police said.

From a copy of his driver’s license photo, two of his suspected victims allegedly identified the independent contractor as their attacker. Detectives said DNA samples link Morales, who was arrested at his home Friday, to the other rapes.

“These are terribly serious crimes,” said Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas as he announced Morales’ arrest. “This suspect had to be taken off the street.”

For detectives, Tuesday’s announcement capped months of painstaking work.

The string of rapes began in Brea in June 1998 and continued through January, when for some reason they stopped, detectives said.

For months, police were unaware of any connection between the assaults. At first glance, there seemed to be few similar characteristics.

One victim was a Seal Beach woman in her 40s, the others teenagers in Irvine, Tustin, Brea and Huntington Beach.

Three involved kidnappings. Two were committed during burglaries. And, in the Huntington Beach case, the rapist pretended to be a police officer when he lured two teenage sisters--one 13, the other 16--to an abandoned section of a nearby shopping mall. There, he tied them up and sexually assaulted them.

Then, in May, four months after the last assault, came a break in the case. A district attorney’s investigator, Paul Tippin, noticed a possible link between the last case in Irvine and the earlier one in Seal Beach. In both, the suspect had entered a home about the same time during the day and waited for his victim.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s crime lab analysis confirmed that the two assaults were linked and that the same person committed the rapes in Huntington Beach and Tustin.

But Morales had never been arrested, police said, so authorities had no record of his DNA.

Meanwhile, Seal Beach detectives were closing in on a suspect in their case.

The suspect had called the Seal Beach victim a couple of times after the rapes “to torment her” and warn her not to tell authorities, said Seal Beach police Sgt. Mike Vasquez, who oversaw his agency’s investigation.

Police traced one of the calls to a Buena Park pay phone. A witness near the phone at the time recalled seeing a man driving a car similar to one owned by Morales. But detectives did not yet know about Morales.

They found him by gathering all the parking tickets issued near the Ocean Avenue address in Seal Beach where the rapist had struck. Morales was among 47 possible suspects cited that day, Vasquez said.

“It was one of those lucky things that turned it around for everybody,” Vasquez said.

Detectives began interviewing the suspects. Weeks ago, they came to Morales, who told police he had been in Seal Beach the day of the rape soliciting business by going door-to-door, Vasquez said.

But detectives doubted the story. Moreover, they noticed that Morales’ car was a close match to the one seen near the Buena Park pay phone soon after the rape, Vasquez said.

Pulling Morales’ photo from DMV records, police last week presented two of the rape victims with a photo lineup. The victims both identified Morales as their attacker, Vasquez said.

That was enough to get a search warrant. At 6:15 a.m. Friday, police began watching Morales’ home. Armed with a court order requiring him to provide a saliva sample, detectives arrested Morales as he left his house.

Morales’ DNA, police said, matched the samples found at all the rape scenes.

At a press conference Tuesday, law enforcement leaders from around the county touted the efforts of the agencies that collaborated to track down the suspect.

Detectives are investigating whether Morales committed an eighth rape in Brea and are hoping that other possible victims will come forward, said district attorney’s office spokeswoman Tori Richards.

Morales, who is married and has two small children, is scheduled to be arraigned today on charges of sexual assault, kidnapping and burglary.

Times staff writer H.G. Reza contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Police Track, Arrest Alleged Rapist

An alleged serial rapist will be arraigned today on charges of sexually assaulting seven women across Orange County since June 1998. Where the rapes occurred:

1. June 1998, in Brea, 17-year-old victim

2. Aug. 1998, in Tustin, 16-year-old victim

3. Oct. 1998, in Huntington Beach, 13- and 16-year old victims

4. Nov. 1998, in Seal Beach, victim in her mid-40s

5. Dec. 1998, in Tustin, 15-year-old victim

6. Jan. 1999, in Irvine, 18-year-old victim

Source: Orange County District Attorney