The perpetrator appears to conduct surveillance prior to his assaults. Taking into consideration the time of day of almost all assaults (i.e., very early morning), it presumes the assault-related behaviors likely started in the evening leading up to the crime. This is referred to as the “surveil/attack” pattern. For example, if a sexual assault occurred Sunday morning at 0200, it is likely the perpetrator began engaging in “pre-assault” behaviors (e.g., surveilling the victim’s residence to establish she was home alone) late Saturday night. By examining the behavior in this manner, a different pattern emerges from that obtained by simply tallying days of the week.
Over the course of 15 years and across 14 assaults, the perpetrator never engaged in the surveil/attack pattern in either Lawrence or Manhattan on a Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Assaults occurred most often on Sunday night/Monday morning (four incidents). In Lawrence, specifically, no assaults occurred from Wednesday nights to Friday mornings or on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings.
This pattern needs to be interpreted with a caveat in mind, however. Given the low frequency of assaults (one to three per year) over a prolonged period (15 years) it is difficult to assign significant meaning to these patterns. Nonetheless, it provides a comparison point when examining other potentially related cases.
