Linda Fairstein - How Serial Rapists Target Their Victims. From the Files of Linda Fairstein

STRANGER RAPISTSpredators who attack strangers either by isolating them in encounters on roadways, parking garages, recreational pathways, or invading their homesare among the most prolific of criminals. Once these men establish a comfort zone, they tend to repeat their acts with alarming frequency. In these zones, they are confident in their ability to overcome their victims, commit a sexual assault, and escape without intervention.

By October 2010, when I wrote this article for Cosmopolitan magazine, I had prosecuted scores of serial sex offenders: violent criminals who carefully targeted women, usually with a well-researched plan of the geographical setting or neighborhood in which they operated. When I tried the case of Russell West in 1985, his brazen daytime attacks shocked everyone in New York City. Manhattans Midtown Rapist struck in landmark locations such as the Pan Am office tower over Grand Central Station and the CBS studio offices. However, it surprised few experienced detectives that West was a parolee and had once worked as a messenger, making deliveries to all these sites. He had been imprisoned ten years earlier for rapes in many of these exact locations. West scouted them carefully, knew every empty office and abandoned floor, and made these busy buildings his comfort zone.

This article also described a serial attacker known in 2010 only as the East Coast Rapist, a then-unidentified man responsible for raping at least seventeen young women between 1997 and 2010. DNA evidence linked a pattern of attacks that followed the I-95 from Fairfax County, Virginia, up through Connecticut and Rhode Island. In early 2011, a joint FBIDepartment of Justice task force stepped up the manhunt for the rapist. An anonymous tip led to Aaron Thomas; when he was arrested in his New Haven, Connecticut, home, he asked the police, why didnt you pick me up sooner? His DNA indeed proved a match to the open cases down the highway. Thomas, now awaiting trial in Virginia, was raised in Prince Georges County, Maryland, which helps explain his ease in navigating the areas where he stalked his prey. Two of the teenagers he abducted and raped on Halloween 2009 testified against Thomas at his hearings. Commonwealth Attorney Paul Ebert said that both young women got some solace from telling their storiesthey were poised and sophisticated. With courageous survivors to confront this serial monster, and the reliability of DNA technology to cement his guilt, I expect Thomas to be handed several life sentences when convicted for these heinous crimes.

IT WAS ABOUT 7 P.M. on a frigid night, three days after Christmas 2001, when a 29-year-old woman in Fairfax County, Virginia, realized she was late for work. Knowing she had to hurry or shed miss her bus, she threw on a coat and rushed into the darkness to the bus stop.

There, she waited, noticing a man standing off to the side, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Shed later tell police that she thought the man was trying to be polite by not smoking too close to her.

But he was anything but polite. Around 7:15, he approached her and asked when the next bus was coming. Before she could answer, he said, I have a weapon. Follow me, and led the terrified woman down the street and behind a large utility box in the front of an apartment complex. He forced her to lie on the ground, lifted her clothes over her face, pulled off her shoes and one leg of her jeans, and raped her, the blade of a knife pressed to her neck.

When results from DNA testing came in about three months later, Fairfax County police linked the crime to five previous rapes dating back to 1997 around the Washington, D.C., area. But connecting these cases didnt help capture the predator. Over the next eight years, police suspect (and some DNA evidence confirms) that he repeated his vicious crime, leaving the D.C. region and traveling up the East Coast, raping three more women and attempting to attack a fourth in Connecticut. He might have succeeded in raping another in Rhode Island, but as he entered a home there, he was scared off by an 11-year-old girls screams.

His most recent known attack occurred in suburban Northern Virginia on Halloween evening 2009. He raped two teenage girls in a wooded ravine behind a dimly lit shopping center on their way home from trick-or-treating. The location of his assaults led the media to dub him the East Coast Rapist. To this day, he still has not been caught or even identified. Police suspect hes responsible for at least 16 rape cases (11 linked by DNA).

Some rapists target women theyve met (even briefly) and commit a single crime with little premeditation, but serial rapists are another breed. Typically intelligent, normal-seeming men, who often have a wife or girlfriend and a demeanor that lets them blend into their communities, theyre known for their methodical preparation, their practiced ability to home in on vulnerable strangers, and the compulsive, recurrent nature of their attacks.

When it comes to dangerous criminals like these, your best weapon is awareness: the more you know about how they work and who they look for, the better your chances of staying out of their sights.

One of my most high-profile cases as a New York City prosecutor was the investigation of a man who had committed a series of brazen rapes of young women inside some of midtown Manhattans fanciest office towers in 1985. The first victim was a 20-year-old college student working part-time for a clothing manufacturer just off Fifth Avenue, on the 18th floor of a high-rise building.

At 3 p.m. on the day of the attack, she was taking the elevator down to the lobby to grab a snack. The elevator stopped on the 16th floor, which was empty and unused. When the doors opened, she was confronted by a well-dressed man. Seeing that she was alone, he dropped the briefcase hed been holding, pulled a large knife from his waistband, and grabbed her, holding the blade to her throat.

The rape took place on the dusty deserted floor of this otherwise busy office building. Nothing had been done by corporate management to secure the vacant level from public access, and the clean-cut rapist, who looked as though he belonged among the other businessmen, had simply roamed the tower and found the empty suite of rooms.

His spree continued for the next several weeks. Dubbed the Midtown Rapist, his victims included a lawyer in her Park Avenue office building, a bookkeeper running an errand in a low-trafficked stairwell, and a secretary carrying documents to another floor several stories up.

Experienced cops lectured me about this kind of predator: how he meticulously plans his attacks, waiting for the brief window of time when his victim is isolated and often distracted or focused on what shes doing. Serial rapists, they taught me, often operate in a comfort zonesome preferring indoors to out, daytime to night, but establishing an area and approach they tend to stick to that assures them of both access to victims as well as an easy escape.

While the East Coast Rapist usually stakes out women at suburban bus stops and shopping centers and in apartment-complex parking lots, the Midtown Rapist studied the interior of tall office towers, which offered the constant flow and anonymity of large crowds into which he could disappear and a ready population of young women to satisfy his sexual appetite.