‘Cold Case Files’ Opens With the Capture of South Side Rapist

It was 10 years ago on a chilly March night in St. Louis that one of the most notorious sexual predators ever to stalk U.S. streets began his reign of terror.

The masked, glove-wearing man who would become known to police and a terrified public as the South Side Rapist assaulted a young single woman who lived alone. Afterward, he forced her to bathe to remove traces of evidence, uttered a threat against reporting the crime, then vanished into the darkness.

The routine wouldn’t vary over the next few months as the series of sexual attacks in the area left police grasping for clues. “You feel like a moron,” says one officer. “You feel like you’re not doing your job.”

Then, as quickly as the attacks began, they stopped. The authorities, who had managed to collect a DNA profile on the suspect despite his precautions, still couldn’t link the evidence with an identity.

Months went by and nothing was heard from the suspect; police reasoned that he might have moved out of the area or been jailed.

But in January 1995, a new wave of assaults began, and tests confirmed that the South Side Rapist had returned to the streets.

The investigation and its surprising conclusion mark the debut tonight of “Cold Case Files” (9 p.m., A&E;), which had previously been a sub-series of the channel’s “Investigative Reports” program.

Tonight’s “Files” is particularly powerful because it not only includes interviews with the detectives who worked the case but also with several of the victims, who insisted on coming forward. And then there’s the interview with the South Side Rapist himself: Dennis Rabbitt, now serving five consecutive life sentences.

After hearing his twisted logic (“I don’t hate women; I love women”) and the effect his actions have had on his victims, you might conclude that the prison term isn’t nearly long enough.