Rape Florida

When Rosalie Martinez first laid eyes on serial killer Oscar Ray Bolin Jr., he had been brought from Florida's death row to a small holding cell in the county jail here to await the first of his three retrials. Convicted of the brutal rapes and murders 10 years ago of three young women, 35-year-old Bolin is considered by authorities to be a dangerous psychopath, a smooth-talking con man and an escape risk who has made direct threats on the lives of police.

A severely mentally retarded woman who was raped while in state care will receive $7.6 million under a bill signed by Gov. Jeb Bush on Wednesday, more than 10 years after the assault. Kimberly Godwin was raped and impregnated in 1991 while living in a group home operated by what is now the Department of Children & Families. Her family later learned she had been abused and neglected in the home for at least three years.

They were the children of privilege. As boys, they went to school together, joined the same Scout troop and passed their teen-age years around the pool at the Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club or sailing in Tampa Bay. They dressed a certain way, in khaki and Polo shirts, and met at the same bars. They did the same drugs. They went to college but felt no pressure to finish. They were boys who grew older but who never grew up.

A 9-month-old Tampa girl was kidnapped, raped and abandoned in a wooded area, and was hospitalized in serious condition. Randolph Standifer, 21, was charged with kidnapping, capital sexual battery and attempted first-degree murder and was being held without bail. He faces a possible life sentence if convicted. Standifer told detectives he took the baby from her crib Saturday morning, said Hillsborough County Sheriff's Col. David Gee. Standifer is a friend of the baby's family.

The woman who accused William Kennedy Smith of rape told a television audience Thursday night that she wants her identity known now so that she can urge rape victims to tell their stories and can defend herself against claims she is psychologically troubled. In her first interview since her allegations were disclosed nine months ago, Patricia Bowman told ABC-TV's "PrimeTime Live" that she is "terrified that victims everywhere who have seen my case . . .

Police in Palm Beach, Fla., were investigating a report by a 30-year-old woman that she had been raped when visiting the Kennedy family compound there. No charges have been filed and no details were released by the police. In Washington, the office of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) issued a statement saying that Kennedy had been in Palm Beach at the time but had no involvement with the alleged incident.

William Kennedy Smith, facing an AIDS test at the request of the woman who accuses him of rape, asked Florida authorities on Thursday to give her the same examination, citing previously undisclosed testimony about her "reputation of promiscuity." In a cross-motion filed with the trial court here, Smith's lawyers, on the eve of his arraignment, accused prosecutor Moira K. Lasch of seeking a headline when she asked the court Wednesday to authorize testing his blood for AIDS.

Police said Wednesday that their investigation is proceeding into whether obstruction of justice hampered their probe into an alleged rape of a woman at the Kennedy family's oceanfront estate here. Despite the insistence by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.

The woman who charged that the nephew of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy raped her, told police that she attempted to escape but that the nephew, William Kennedy Smith, tackled her, held her down and forced himself on her as she struggled vainly, a police report released Friday discloses.

An HIV-positive man convicted of attempted murder in the rape of three boys was sentenced Thursday to five consecutive life terms. He is believed to be the first person in the nation convicted of attempted murder for using the AIDS virus as a deadly weapon during a rape. Ignacio A. Perea Jr., 32, was found guilty by a jury Feb. 28 of attempted murder, kidnaping, lewd and lascivious assault and sexual battery in a case that has broken new legal ground and outraged the community.

They met in church, fell in love and married. And for 11 months they enjoyed a happy conjugal life. But now, says Ana Margarita Martinez, every time that she and her husband made love, she was raped. Not by her husband, Juan Pablo Roque. By Cuba.

Florida prosecutors dropped charges against a man thought to be a serial rapist targeting international tourists, citing DNA tests that failed to link him to the attacks. Kenneth Taylor, 39, said he might have spent the rest of his life in prison, simply because he looks like "hundreds of black males in the area." He was charged July 16 with raping a British tourist in Kissimmee, Fla.

A man was arrested in connection with a rape and robbery in the Kissimmee hotel room of two British tourists, and investigators were looking into whether nine other similar attacks in the Orlando area might be related. Kenneth Taylor, 39, was identified by one of the victims as being the man who attacked them Monday in their room. Police said the pair were robbed and forced to perform sex acts with each other before the woman was raped.

Twenty years after he raped a California teenager, chopped off her forearms and left her naked in a ditch, Lawrence Singleton was sentenced Tuesday to die in Florida's electric chair for the fatal stabbing of a Tampa prostitute in his own living room. Singleton, 70, showed no emotion as he listened to Judge Bob Anderson Mitcham seal his fate in words laden with undisguised disgust.

A 14-year-old girl who was raped, stabbed nearly 30 times and beaten so badly that her eyes swelled shut was found staggering down a road four days after she says a family friend attacked her. The girl said she had stayed hidden in the woods because she was terrified that her assailant would return to kill her. She identified the attacker as 22-year-old Scott Christopher Malsky, who was arrested later in Delaware after police stopped him for speeding.

After a high-speed chase through this Florida city, police arrested a man suspected of murdering a tourist and raping two women near the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, officers said Tuesday. "I don't know why I do the things I do," James Sears Hartsock told reporters after his arrest Monday night. Hartsock, 25, was charged with raping a tourist and murdering her male companion last week in a hotel across from Universal Studios.

Cross-examination, trial lawyers say, is the greatest test of an advocate's skill. If so, then Moira K. Lasch, the prosecutor in the William Kennedy Smith rape trial, failed dramatically on Tuesday. Although a trial is deadly serious business, it is also a show, a production in which each attorney is scripting and directing a drama for presentation to a select audience--the jury. And in a criminal case, the heart of the show is when the defendant takes the stand and confronts the prosecutor.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told a jury Friday how he had taken his son and nephew for a late-night drink March 30 to overcome a melancholy mood, but denied that he heard screams or saw any evidence that his nephew had raped a woman later on the lawn of the family's oceanfront estate. In the fifth day of the William Kennedy Smith trial, the senator's son Patrick, 24, also took the stand to say that he had seen a woman at the family estate later that night with his cousin.

The suspect in a series of crimes that included rape, kidnapping and one slaying was captured after a 15-mile car chase. James Sears Hartsock, 25, was spotted in the small town of Holly Hill driving a car stolen from a woman who was abducted last week and held captive for four days, police said. The woman was freed late Sunday near downtown Orlando. Hartsock also was wanted in connection with last week's bludgeoning death of a man and the rape of a woman near Universal Studios in Orlando.

An inmate author does his best to save children from a life of crime. An actress struggles to regain her life and livelihood after losing both legs in a crash. The wife of a socially prominent attorney leaves her husband and children to marry a convicted murderer. A wife-attorney defends her White House advisor-husband after he is photographed in the arms of another woman. You met these remarkable people on the pages of Life & Style in 1996.