Authorities: DNA links man to rapes over 11-year span

WOOSTER, Ohio (AP) — A prison inmate charged with sexual attacks on elderly women during an 11-year span pleaded not guilty Wednesday to rape, attempted rape and several other charges.

Jeffrey Humrichouser, 49, of Wooster, appeared in Wayne County Common Pleas Court before Judge Robert Brown. Wooster is in Northeast Ohio, about 50 miles south of Cleveland.

The judge assigned his defense to the Wayne County Public Defender’s office. A message seeking comment was left with the office.

Judge Brown set bond at $500,000 and issued a gag order banning anyone involved with the case from making any public comments about it. The judge was concerned pretrial publicity could interfere with a fair trial.

Humrichouser became a suspect in the crimes based on a DNA sample he was required to give when he was sent to prison on an unrelated conviction, police said previously. His DNA was submitted to a national database of unsolved crimes.

He is an inmate at the Mansfield Correctional Institution and is scheduled to be released Dec. 4, 2009, according to the state prisons Web site.

Besides the rape and attempted rape, he has been indicted on charges of gross sexual imposition, aggravated burglary, felonious assault and disrupting public service.

The attacks involved nine women from 1996 to April 2007. All but one victim was at least 70, and Wayne County Prosecutor Martin Frantz said all except two are alive.

In one case, a 75-year-old woman was attacked 10 years ago and again 16 months later, both times at her home near Dalton in Northeast Ohio.

Another attack against a 95-year-old woman ended when the victim pushed the medical alert button on her necklace. The attacker was masquerading as a pizza delivery man.

One victim is now 101 and provided investigators with details.

Humrichouser is serving a sentence for felonious assault for a bar fight that cost a man an eye and an unrelated vehicular assault for crashing a vehicle in January 2007 and fleeing, leaving his badly injured 21-year-old son trapped in the truck.

At sentencing, Humrichouser said he walked away from the crash after seeing emergency personnel because he feared losing his driver’s license.