A convicted Connecticut rapist who spent decades as a fugitive using a stolen identity has been busted in Florida some 44 years later, federal authorities said.
Douglas E. Bennett, 76, was taken into custody Wednesday at his home in Clearwater on charges of passport fraud and aggravated identity theft more than four decades after he disappeared when he lost an appeal in a 1975 rape, robbery and kidnapping conviction, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
Bennett, a former Mount Holyoke College drama instructor, was sentenced to 9 to 18 years in state prison for attacking a 22-year-old Wethersfield woman in her home on Valentine’s Day in 1974, the Hartford Courant reported.
Bennett insisted he was innocent and one of his attorneys, F. Lee Bailey, claimed he would be cleared via appeal, citing new evidence and the results of a lie detector test, the newspaper reported.
Prosecutors said Bennett stormed into the woman’s home in search of her father while wearing a mask and armed with a gun. He then robbed the woman before dragging her outside, where he raped her. She was also sexually assaulted a second time in a car by Bennett and an accomplice who was never charged, the Courant reported.
Bennett ultimately lost his appeal in 1976 when the state Supreme Court upheld his conviction from a year earlier. He then became a fugitive and in 1977, assumed the identity of someone who died decades earlier, federal prosecutors said.
Bennett was identified after applying in July 2016 to renew the passport of a 5-year-old boy who died near his former college in 1945, the Courant reported.
A fingerprint comparison Wednesday confirmed Bennett is the same man who was convicted in Connecticut in 1975. He also had a Florida driver’s license with his photograph bearing false information, federal prosecutors said. He faces up to 12 years in federal prison if convicted on the new charges.
One of Bennett’s neighbors, meanwhile, said he was stunned by his arrest.
“It’s incredible, you only hear of this stuff on TV, in a book, or in a movie,” Clearwater resident John Ouimette told WFLA. “It’s really sinister. It’s bad, it’s as bad as it gets, covers all the bases.”
