The Virginian-Pilot
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NORFOLK
When police officers arrived at a young woman's home in the wee hours one day last year, they found her in tears. She told them a stranger had barged into her apartment.
He slammed her into a coffee table, cracking it, then put a knife to her neck. He forced her into the bedroom and sexually assaulted her. Before leaving, he told her that he'd done this before, and that if she called for help, he would rape and kill her mother.
As police gathered evidence, a female investigator pulled her aside. She whispered something unsettling: "If we find out that you're lying, this will be a felony charge."
The woman insisted to authorities that her words were as true as they were terrifying.
A detective drove her to the Norfolk Police Operations Center on Virginia Beach Boulevard and took a brief statement. She thought she would then see her parents or undergo an examination - sometimes called a "rape kit" - to gather physical evidence. But she was told she would need to be interviewed by other detectives.
She waited more than 45 minutes in an interview room. She dozed off, her head and arms on the table in front of her. She was awakened by two detectives, she said, including one who was especially abrasive as he sought answers and told her she was hiding something.
The accusations went in circles, she said, and she was told her demeanor suggested she didn't want to be there.
"Back up. It just seems like you're leaving something out," she recalled them saying.
"You're telling us a different story than you told ... the other detectives."
"This only happened hours ago. Why can't you remember?"
The woman told the detectives that she did not know the man.
"I just got off work," she told them repeatedly. She was told a rape kit couldn't be done until she finished her statement.
She said she counted the number of times that one investigator told her she was an adult and free to leave. After the fourth time, she stood up.
The investigators walked her to the lobby. If her parents had any questions, they told her, they weren't going to answer them because she was an adult. She didn't respond.
She went outside to the parking area with her parents and screamed: "They don't believe me!"
Her stepfather, a former military police officer in the Army, was so angry he charged toward the building until a family friend slapped him in the face and told him his daughter needed him.
The police closed the case.
An attacker was on the loose.
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The woman, 22, worked as a bartender in Virginia Beach near the Norfolk line. She enjoyed her job and made good money. She and her boyfriend rented a two-bedroom apartment in a duplex on 19th Bay Street in Norfolk. They liked going out and playing pool, kayaking, fishing and picnics.
She agreed to share her story with The Virginian-Pilot but asked that her name not be used. The Pilot generally does not publish the names of sexual assault victims.
The woman said she left work about 3:30 a.m. April 26, 2012, the morning of the attack. She drove to the 7-Eleven at Pleasant Avenue and Shore Drive in Norfolk to get a money order to pay rent. She left the store close to 4 a.m.
As she drove home, she said she noticed a silver SUV behind her. She drove by a city police car that was parked on 19th Bay Street and saw an officer talking to someone not far from her house. She parked in her driveway, and the SUV continued down the street and disappeared.
She left the front door cracked to let some fresh air in as she sat down on the floor to feed a pet. At that moment, a man pushed open the door, rushed in and pulled her to her feet by her long, brown hair.
"Just do what he says and I'll still be alive," she said to herself.
At one point, he took her to the kitchen to get a cup of water. She took a sip, and he drank the rest. When he was about to leave, he told her to stay in bed.
"You may or may not see me again," he said.
She waited, and she later saw her cellphone in the toilet where he'd thrown it. She reached into the bowl. It was still working so she called a friend, a former military police officer.
"I don't know if he is still here," she said before the phone died.
Her friend found her crying and disoriented, according to a Circuit Court filing. He told her to try to remain calm and tell every detail to police.
Several officers arrived and spoke with her. She told police that the attacker had a Grim Reaper tattoo on one forearm. A forensic investigator packaged the cup.
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A day after the attack, the woman went back to her apartment to pack her things. She left most of her stuff behind, trying to escape the memory of what happened.
Her stepfather emailed The Virginian-Pilot the next day about a "predator among us." He described the attack and said Norfolk police were not much help.
Please call, he said.
On May 10, 2012, police emailed The Pilot: "The female complainant/victim became uncooperative after giving her statement regarding an alleged incident of sexual assault. She told detectives she no longer wanted to continue with the investigation. The case was closed as a result."
A few days later, the woman returned to the Norfolk Police Operations Center, and one of the detectives from the previous interview said she could talk to him or write a statement. She wrote seven pages. She also sat down with someone who created a computer composite based on her description, but it was never released to the public. Police investigators described it as "pretty generic."
On May 30, police told The Pilot by email that the woman's account had discrepancies.
"It was while attempting to clarify a number of details that the victim became somewhat uncooperative. Investigators were going to try again but I have not heard back from them to see if their efforts were successful," a police spokesman said.
The woman and her boyfriend moved in with her parents, where they slept on a mattress on the floor of the laundry room.
Working was difficult. She said she didn't trust people anymore. Every bar customer was a potential criminal, she said. Eventually, she quit.
Two months after the attack, on June 25, 2012, she was at home reading the news online when she saw a mug shot of Roy Ruiz Loredo. It was attached to a story about Virginia Beach police arresting a suspected serial attacker. She gasped.
She called a Norfolk detective, who said he would contact Virginia Beach. Beach police told the detective about their suspect - and the Grim Reaper tattoo on his forearm.
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After his arrest, Loredo would tell a psychologist what he was thinking that night in Ocean View, when he stalked her in his silver SUV.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Charlotte Purkey read from the psychologist's report in a courtroom this spring.
At the time of the attack, Loredo was 27, married with children, with no criminal record.
According to the report:
He went out that night looking for sex. When he saw a young woman at the 7-Eleven, his initial plan was to box in her car as if by accident, then get out and proposition her.
He told the psychologist he enjoyed forceful sex with strangers and had no respect for women. Making them suffer excited him, the psychologist wrote.
The psychologist diagnosed Loredo as a sexual sadist and serial rapist.
Two months after the Ocean View attack, Loredo was accused of striking again, close to his home in Virginia Beach, on June 24, 2012.
One victim was walking home shortly before 4 a.m., police said, when she was sexually assaulted near a park on Andrew Jackson Lane. The attacker ran, and she called 911.
A few minutes later, according to police, a second victim was attacked in the parking lot of the Brass Bell restaurant on Independence Boulevard when she was dragged from her car. The attacker fled when he heard police sirens responding to the first attack, police said.
Shortly after that, in the same area, a third victim heard someone come in her back door. She was dragged outside and sexually assaulted, police said.
Beach police arrested Loredo. They have not released details of the evidence used to identify and apprehend him.
Loredo has been indicted in Virginia Beach on charges of robbery, burglary, multiple counts of rape, aggravated sexual battery and other sex offenses. A trial date will be set later this month in Virginia Beach.
Loredo pleaded guilty to multiple felonies in the Ocean View assault and was sentenced to 36 years.
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On April 16 - almost a year after the attack - the woman in Norfolk received a letter from Norfolk's chief of police, Mike Goldsmith.
"It has come to my attention that the investigation of the crime recently committed against you may not have been properly conducted. Please be assured I take all allegations of police misconduct seriously," it said.
Goldsmith said he had ordered an internal investigation and asked for her help.
A sergeant with internal affairs told her that he didn't like what he saw on a video recording of the interview she underwent after the assault: "I wanted to jump through the screen to choke them," she recalls him saying.
What consequences would they face? she asked. Termination or retraining, she was told.
About a month ago, the woman was called to the chief's office. She and her boyfriend sat in a conference room with Goldsmith and several assistants, and Goldsmith apologized for the investigation ordeal. He told her she shouldn't have had to go through that, she said.
Goldsmith also told her he couldn't reveal what happened to the officers but said the situation had been dealt with.
The woman said she didn't say anything, and they stared at each other in awkward silence. "At least somebody said it," her boyfriend said. And then they left.
When asked about the case, Capt. Keith Torian, a spokesman for Goldsmith, told The Pilot that the department would have no comment.
The Norfolk police's standard operating procedures do not require rape victims to finish an interview with detectives before a rape kit is taken. In fact, the procedures say that rape kits can be completed even "when the victim does not want to speak with or cooperate in any way with a criminal investigation." The test results, done at a hospital, can be held for a year, in case the victim comes forward.
As for the composite the victim gave investigators when she returned for questioning - which authorities still refuse to release - a Circuit Court filing would later say that it is "almost identical" to a photo of Loredo.
Carol Tracy, the executive director of the Philadelphia-based Women's Law Project, has researched closed rape cases in that city and spoke to police chiefs in 2012 at a sexual assault forum hosted by the Police Executive Research Forum.
The Norfolk case, she said, was similar to one in Pennsylvania in which a woman was sexually assaulted at a convenience store. A detective charged the victim with making a false report and the rapist went on to commit other attacks. The rapist was arrested in a neighboring county and confessed.
It's not uncommon for police to treat rape victims as if they are lying and then interrogate them, Tracy said. "The emphasis on victim behavior in sexual assault crimes has been the method of investigating sex crimes for years."
Police need to realize that serial predators exist, she said.
"This is not miscommunication about sex," she said. "This isn't 'he said, she said.' These are violent serial perpetrators."
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Looking back more than a year later, the woman said she still feels unsettled about how detectives handled her case.
"I've gotten justice with the suspect but not with the Police Department," she said.
The bar where she worked was not far from where Loredo lived and where the alleged attacks in Virginia Beach occurred. The woman said she thinks about those women - she has former customers and friends in the area who know two of them.
The woman says she has asked a prosecutor repeatedly for a copy of the taped police interview. After hearing the sergeant say it made him angry, she wanted to see it for herself.
Her request was denied.
Patrick Wilson, 757-222-3893, patrick.wilson@pilotonline.com
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Letter to the victim from Norfolk police chief
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