The Spider-Man Rapist
Can you unmask the Spider-Man rapist?
By Ken Raymond
Staff Writer
All she did was close her eyes.
About 10 p.m. on May 19, 2004, the woman nodded off on the couch while watching television in her rented northwest Oklahoma City home.
The night was hot. She’d left the front door open. The only protection she had from the predator outside was a flimsy glass door, which she hadn’t thought to lock.
Sometime after midnight, the man slipped inside, and now there was nothing to protect her at all.
The attack didn’t come right away. The man wandered through the woman’s house for a while, looking through her belongings, examining her jewelry.
Eventually, the woman stirred. She’d fallen asleep with three lights on, said Oklahoma City police Inspector Kim Davis, but she awoke to only two. She wondered groggily if a bulb had burned out — and then the man was upon her, a folding pocket knife held to her throat.
The rapist’s appearance was peculiar, the victim later told police. Muscular but slight, he wore an oversized red thermal shirt and bright red dancer’s tights. His face was hidden behind black sunglasses and at least one blue bandana, and he moved with feline grace and speed.
Her attacker looked familiar, the woman told police.
He looked like Spider-Man.
‘A lot of similarities’
Davis got the call at 5:49 a.m. the day of the attack.
A veteran police officer, Davis spent 11 years on the street and three more on a plainclothes drug interdiction team before making the jump to the sex crimes unit. She felt lucky to get the assignment she wanted and luckier still to be partnered with legendary detective Butch McKenna.
McKenna’s suicide at police headquarters about six months before the Spider-Man attack took everyone by surprise — including Davis. A few weeks later, she almost broke down when she appeared before the city council to accept an award on McKenna’s behalf; he and another detective were honored as the South Oklahoma City Kiwanis Club Police Officers of the Year for cracking a serial rape case.
Now, Davis was neck-deep in a similar investigation, trying to track down a rapist who attacked at least 10 women in Oklahoma City, Del City and Midwest City.
That’s why she was called out to the Spider-Man scene.
“Everyone assumed this case was related to my serial,” Davis said. “There were a lot of similarities.”
Davis examined the house along with the Crime Scene Investigation unit. It was a stone home with brown trim and a one-car garage in an aging neighborhood in the 1400 block of NW 48. Two bedrooms. Two bathrooms. A kitchen.
The living room was the first area a person would enter if they walked through the front door. That’s where the victim, a white woman in her 40s, had been sleeping.
With the lights on and the door open, she would have been visible from outside. Easy prey.
Was she a victim of the serial rapist? It was too soon to tell.
‘I’ll have to face God’
At the hospital, the victim shared her story.
The rapist confronted her as she got up, grabbing her from behind and pressing his knife blade against the sensitive flesh of her neck.
“Be quiet,” he told her. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to look.”
He told her that she shouldn’t have left the front door open. He acted solicitous, as if trying to convince the woman to like him or blame herself for what he was about to do.
When he wasn’t raping her, “he was gentlemanly,” Davis said. “Not mean. He acted more concerned with her comfort level.”
He stole much of the woman’s jewelry but let her keep anything that had sentimental value. He didn’t beat or stab her, and he seemed to understand that what he was doing was not only criminal but also immoral.
“I know what I’m doing is bad,” he told the woman, “but I’ll have to face God for that.”
When he tied the woman up, he asked if the ropes were too tight. When she said it hurt, he loosened them. Before he left, he poured cold water over her head.
“He didn’t want her to get too hot,” Davis said. “He planned on her getting free. It was just long enough for him to get away.”
He took the woman’s maroon 1997 Nissan Maxima, driver license, PIN code and ATM card. And then he was gone.
Whether by dumb luck or foreknowledge, police later learned, the man drove to one of the five automatic teller machines in the city that is not equipped with a security camera. No images of him were captured as he accessed the woman’s bank account.
There wasn’t much for him to take. He withdrew $40 and abandoned the car near the Classen Grill, 5124 N Classen Blvd.
His trail ended there.
Serial rape case closed
Police canvassed the neighborhood. No one had seen anything.
Although he’d been lucky, the rapist hadn’t managed to escape without a trace. When he sexually assaulted the woman, he left with her a key piece of evidence — his own DNA.
All Davis had to do was match it to a suspect.
And then one appeared.
July 28, 2004, a Midwest City police officer working his final day before retirement recognized a suspected rapist in a grocery store surveillance video shot just 30 minutes before a woman was raped.
Later that day, police arrested Rayshun Mullins, then 21, of Edmond. Mullins, who had played football and basketball at Midwest City High School, was initially linked to five attacks in metro Oklahoma City. Ultimately, that number grew to 10.
Mullins was convicted of rape, sodomy, burglary and robbery and was sentenced to 845 years in prison. Some of his time is set to run concurrently, reducing his sentence to 535 years.
Davis’ serial rape case was solved, but what about Spider-Man?
On the surface, Mullins looked good as a suspect in that case, too. Physically, he was a perfect match, and there were behavioral similarities — taking the ATM card, obtaining money, walking off with some of his victims’ possessions.
But even before the arrest, Davis knew the truth. Weeks earlier, she’d had DNA from the Spider-Man case compared with DNA from the serial cases. It didn’t match.
Mullins was a rapist, but he wasn’t Spider-Man.
‘You’ll never feel safe’
More than three years have passed, and Davis hasn’t stopped searching for Spider-Man. She can’t.
“This is my bottom-drawer case,” Davis said. “It’s the one I pull out whenever I’m not working on anything else.”
The case gnaws at her, Davis said, because rapists like this one don’t just violate their victims’ bodies. They also steal their sense of security, causing enough damage in moments to emotionally scar victims forever.
“Where do you want to go when you feel bad?” Davis said. “You want to go home. You’re comfortable in your home. You’re safe in your home. But after something like this, I don’t care where you live, you’ll never feel safe in your own home again.”
So Davis pays attention to rape reports that come into the department, looking in vain for a case similar to this one. Nothing ever quite adds up, but she keeps running the mental calculations, searching for a solution.
She knows someday she’ll find it. She hopes the public will help.
“I’ll do a back-flip off my desk if this story generates a tip that solves this,” she said.
For now, Spider-Man’s secret identity remains a mystery.
Davis is determined to unmask him.
Staff Writer
All she did was close her eyes.
About 10 p.m. on May 19, 2004, the woman nodded off on the couch while watching television in her rented northwest Oklahoma City home.
The night was hot. She’d left the front door open. The only protection she had from the predator outside was a flimsy glass door, which she hadn’t thought to lock.
Sometime after midnight, the man slipped inside, and now there was nothing to protect her at all.
The attack didn’t come right away. The man wandered through the woman’s house for a while, looking through her belongings, examining her jewelry.
Eventually, the woman stirred. She’d fallen asleep with three lights on, said Oklahoma City police Inspector Kim Davis, but she awoke to only two. She wondered groggily if a bulb had burned out — and then the man was upon her, a folding pocket knife held to her throat.
The rapist’s appearance was peculiar, the victim later told police. Muscular but slight, he wore an oversized red thermal shirt and bright red dancer’s tights. His face was hidden behind black sunglasses and at least one blue bandana, and he moved with feline grace and speed.
Her attacker looked familiar, the woman told police.
He looked like Spider-Man.
‘A lot of similarities’
Davis got the call at 5:49 a.m. the day of the attack.
A veteran police officer, Davis spent 11 years on the street and three more on a plainclothes drug interdiction team before making the jump to the sex crimes unit. She felt lucky to get the assignment she wanted and luckier still to be partnered with legendary detective Butch McKenna.
McKenna’s suicide at police headquarters about six months before the Spider-Man attack took everyone by surprise — including Davis. A few weeks later, she almost broke down when she appeared before the city council to accept an award on McKenna’s behalf; he and another detective were honored as the South Oklahoma City Kiwanis Club Police Officers of the Year for cracking a serial rape case.
Now, Davis was neck-deep in a similar investigation, trying to track down a rapist who attacked at least 10 women in Oklahoma City, Del City and Midwest City.
That’s why she was called out to the Spider-Man scene.
“Everyone assumed this case was related to my serial,” Davis said. “There were a lot of similarities.”
Davis examined the house along with the Crime Scene Investigation unit. It was a stone home with brown trim and a one-car garage in an aging neighborhood in the 1400 block of NW 48. Two bedrooms. Two bathrooms. A kitchen.
The living room was the first area a person would enter if they walked through the front door. That’s where the victim, a white woman in her 40s, had been sleeping.
With the lights on and the door open, she would have been visible from outside. Easy prey.
Was she a victim of the serial rapist? It was too soon to tell.
‘I’ll have to face God’
At the hospital, the victim shared her story.
The rapist confronted her as she got up, grabbing her from behind and pressing his knife blade against the sensitive flesh of her neck.
“Be quiet,” he told her. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to look.”
He told her that she shouldn’t have left the front door open. He acted solicitous, as if trying to convince the woman to like him or blame herself for what he was about to do.
When he wasn’t raping her, “he was gentlemanly,” Davis said. “Not mean. He acted more concerned with her comfort level.”
He stole much of the woman’s jewelry but let her keep anything that had sentimental value. He didn’t beat or stab her, and he seemed to understand that what he was doing was not only criminal but also immoral.
“I know what I’m doing is bad,” he told the woman, “but I’ll have to face God for that.”
When he tied the woman up, he asked if the ropes were too tight. When she said it hurt, he loosened them. Before he left, he poured cold water over her head.
“He didn’t want her to get too hot,” Davis said. “He planned on her getting free. It was just long enough for him to get away.”
He took the woman’s maroon 1997 Nissan Maxima, driver license, PIN code and ATM card. And then he was gone.
Whether by dumb luck or foreknowledge, police later learned, the man drove to one of the five automatic teller machines in the city that is not equipped with a security camera. No images of him were captured as he accessed the woman’s bank account.
There wasn’t much for him to take. He withdrew $40 and abandoned the car near the Classen Grill, 5124 N Classen Blvd.
His trail ended there.
Serial rape case closed
Police canvassed the neighborhood. No one had seen anything.
Although he’d been lucky, the rapist hadn’t managed to escape without a trace. When he sexually assaulted the woman, he left with her a key piece of evidence — his own DNA.
All Davis had to do was match it to a suspect.
And then one appeared.
July 28, 2004, a Midwest City police officer working his final day before retirement recognized a suspected rapist in a grocery store surveillance video shot just 30 minutes before a woman was raped.
Later that day, police arrested Rayshun Mullins, then 21, of Edmond. Mullins, who had played football and basketball at Midwest City High School, was initially linked to five attacks in metro Oklahoma City. Ultimately, that number grew to 10.
Mullins was convicted of rape, sodomy, burglary and robbery and was sentenced to 845 years in prison. Some of his time is set to run concurrently, reducing his sentence to 535 years.
Davis’ serial rape case was solved, but what about Spider-Man?
On the surface, Mullins looked good as a suspect in that case, too. Physically, he was a perfect match, and there were behavioral similarities — taking the ATM card, obtaining money, walking off with some of his victims’ possessions.
But even before the arrest, Davis knew the truth. Weeks earlier, she’d had DNA from the Spider-Man case compared with DNA from the serial cases. It didn’t match.
Mullins was a rapist, but he wasn’t Spider-Man.
‘You’ll never feel safe’
More than three years have passed, and Davis hasn’t stopped searching for Spider-Man. She can’t.
“This is my bottom-drawer case,” Davis said. “It’s the one I pull out whenever I’m not working on anything else.”
The case gnaws at her, Davis said, because rapists like this one don’t just violate their victims’ bodies. They also steal their sense of security, causing enough damage in moments to emotionally scar victims forever.
“Where do you want to go when you feel bad?” Davis said. “You want to go home. You’re comfortable in your home. You’re safe in your home. But after something like this, I don’t care where you live, you’ll never feel safe in your own home again.”
So Davis pays attention to rape reports that come into the department, looking in vain for a case similar to this one. Nothing ever quite adds up, but she keeps running the mental calculations, searching for a solution.
She knows someday she’ll find it. She hopes the public will help.
“I’ll do a back-flip off my desk if this story generates a tip that solves this,” she said.
For now, Spider-Man’s secret identity remains a mystery.
Davis is determined to unmask him.
Related Articles and Links
Who is he?
Shawna Cleary doesn't know his name, but his behavior tells her a whole lot about him.
Cleary, a criminologist and University of Central Oklahoma professor, is the author of "Sex Offenders and Self-Control: Explaining Sexual Violence.” The book is based on interviews and surveys she conducted with 295 sex offenders in the Oklahoma prison system.
Here's her take on Spider-Man:
What's up with the red tights?
"He either wanted her to be more remembering of the costume than of him, or it played into a particular fantasy he had. ... You see runners who wear tights. Climbers wear tights. Obviously, male dancers wear tights. ... Maybe he has a superhero fantasy and was trying to look like a superhero.
"Or maybe he thought he looked good in the tights. If he wanted it to be a sexual encounter, maybe he thought that she would be attracted by that outfit.”
Why would he try to attract her?
"Power-reassurance rapists would like in their heart of hearts for the victim to see them as a lover and not a rapist. ... They want to pretend that it's not a rape, that it's a sexual encounter. ... It's also not uncommon for this type of rapist to re-contact the victim after a rape and ask them for a date. ... They just want what they want when they want it.”
If he wanted romance, why commit rape?
"His reason for raping is to reassure himself of his masculinity.”
Was this a random attack?
"I think this wasn't what we call an opportunistic rape in the victim selection. I believe that he'd been watching her awhile, the reason being that I don't think he would've been dressed that way if he hadn't. ... He knew he was prepared to do a rape that night, because he had brought a weapon.”
Why did he take the victim's driver license?
"I think he kept it because he wanted a trophy from this encounter, something to help him relive it down the road. Also, the jewelry helps him do that. Sometimes rapists will take pieces of jewelry and give them ... to significant women in their lives — their wives, their girlfriends.
"They get a jolt of adrenalin every time they see that. It's like that much more power over both the victim and this person in their lives. ... He can remember the victim and the power he had over her every time he sees that being worn by somebody close to him.”
The Spider-Man rapist stole these objects from his victim in May 2004. Do you know who has them?
- Antique cameo earrings, ivory and amber
- Drop silver and garnet earrings
- Silver-plated and cubic zirconia ring
- “J”-shaped gold and diamond earrings
- Silver oval ring with a black stone in the center
- Earrings with gold chains and pearls
- Silver-plated and goldtone earrings with purple stones
- Gold post earrings with a cluster of saltwater pearls
- Gold ring with a band of channel-set diamonds
- Stretchy bracelet with two rows of rhinestones
- Silver bracelet with turquoise and other colored stone inserts
- Large silver cross earrings
- Oval silver and amber earrings on wires
- Silver and rhinestone hoop earrings
- A Nikon camera
Source: Oklahoma City police
Shawna Cleary doesn't know his name, but his behavior tells her a whole lot about him.
Cleary, a criminologist and University of Central Oklahoma professor, is the author of "Sex Offenders and Self-Control: Explaining Sexual Violence.” The book is based on interviews and surveys she conducted with 295 sex offenders in the Oklahoma prison system.
Here's her take on Spider-Man:
What's up with the red tights?
"He either wanted her to be more remembering of the costume than of him, or it played into a particular fantasy he had. ... You see runners who wear tights. Climbers wear tights. Obviously, male dancers wear tights. ... Maybe he has a superhero fantasy and was trying to look like a superhero.
"Or maybe he thought he looked good in the tights. If he wanted it to be a sexual encounter, maybe he thought that she would be attracted by that outfit.”
Why would he try to attract her?
"Power-reassurance rapists would like in their heart of hearts for the victim to see them as a lover and not a rapist. ... They want to pretend that it's not a rape, that it's a sexual encounter. ... It's also not uncommon for this type of rapist to re-contact the victim after a rape and ask them for a date. ... They just want what they want when they want it.”
If he wanted romance, why commit rape?
"His reason for raping is to reassure himself of his masculinity.”
Was this a random attack?
"I think this wasn't what we call an opportunistic rape in the victim selection. I believe that he'd been watching her awhile, the reason being that I don't think he would've been dressed that way if he hadn't. ... He knew he was prepared to do a rape that night, because he had brought a weapon.”
Why did he take the victim's driver license?
"I think he kept it because he wanted a trophy from this encounter, something to help him relive it down the road. Also, the jewelry helps him do that. Sometimes rapists will take pieces of jewelry and give them ... to significant women in their lives — their wives, their girlfriends.
"They get a jolt of adrenalin every time they see that. It's like that much more power over both the victim and this person in their lives. ... He can remember the victim and the power he had over her every time he sees that being worn by somebody close to him.”
The Spider-Man rapist stole these objects from his victim in May 2004. Do you know who has them?
- Antique cameo earrings, ivory and amber
- Drop silver and garnet earrings
- Silver-plated and cubic zirconia ring
- “J”-shaped gold and diamond earrings
- Silver oval ring with a black stone in the center
- Earrings with gold chains and pearls
- Silver-plated and goldtone earrings with purple stones
- Gold post earrings with a cluster of saltwater pearls
- Gold ring with a band of channel-set diamonds
- Stretchy bracelet with two rows of rhinestones
- Silver bracelet with turquoise and other colored stone inserts
- Large silver cross earrings
- Oval silver and amber earrings on wires
- Silver and rhinestone hoop earrings
- A Nikon camera
Source: Oklahoma City police