XPost: miami.general, alt.politics.democrats, sac.politics
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh

On the morning of Feb. 21, 2005, a utility worker, dispatched to
a vacant cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Miami spotted something
unusual in the weeds a few feet from the street.

It was a woman. She was naked, brutally beaten, but miraculously
still alive. Miami-Dade Police estimated the petite, blond-
haired woman had been unconscious for almost 24 hours.

"She was dumped out and left for dead," Miami-Dade Police Det.
Alan Foote said of the victim.

But what investigators didn’t know at the time was they had
stumbled into a case that would eventually lead them to a serial
rapist who had already claimed victims in another state – and
who, according to authorities, would strike again, and again, as
he moved around the country.

The mystery woman had been stripped naked, with no means to
identify her. A blue blanket was the only potential piece of
evidence recovered at the trash-strewn crime scene – yet
investigators were unable to gain any information from it.
Officers canvassed neighbors living nearby, but turned up
nothing.

The next day, the victim emerged from unconsciousness, and
through a fog of pain, she tried to communicate what happened to
her.

She was unable to speak, but scrawled some basic information on
a piece of paper. Detectives learned that her name was Inna
Budnytska, she was Ukrainian and she worked for one of the many
cruise lines that operate in Miami.

She also wrote down her attorney's name and phone number -- a
detail that Foote found "very unusual."

"Maybe they thought it was unusual that someone would ask for an
attorney, but this woman had a horrific assault and probably was
reaching for anything that she could," said her attorney,
Mitchell Lipcon.

In fact, Budnytska, who was 21 at the time, said she had been
injured on the ship where she worked, and had filed suit against
the cruise line.

"I didn't know nobody," she said. "I was alone up here. So the
only one person who I knew, that was my attorney."

While rehabilitating from her injury, Budnytska was housed by
the cruise line at the Miami Airport Regency Hotel, a local
hotel about 10 miles east of the cul-de-sac where she was found.
The hotel would prove crucial to the mystery -- especially its
sophisticated security system.

"We have 16 cameras covering the whole perimeter of the hotel,"
said hotel vice president Jose Vazquez. "Those cameras have a
motion sensor detector. We have two security guards at night on
duty. So we can see anything that happens."

Foote obtained a pile of DVDs from the hotel's cameras and
started scanning them for any evidence of the crime.

Victim struggles to remember events: 'I was in shock'

Once she was able to speak, Budnytska provided a statement about
her activities on the night of the attack. She said she'd gone
out with a friend that night to a restaurant in Coconut Grove,
Florida, returning by herself in a taxi shortly after midnight.

Security cameras recorded her leaving the hotel again at 3:33
a.m. to buy a phone card to call her mother in Ukraine,
returning just seven minutes later at 3:40 a.m. Budnytska was
then recorded walking to the lobby elevators at 3:41 a.m. ...
and was never seen by the cameras again.

The next thing Budnytska said she remembered was regaining
consciousness for a brief moment at the cul-de-sac, where she
was discovered at 8:30 a.m. that morning.

"It was very cold ... and dark," she recalled. "I couldn't stand
up. I could not walk."

Budnytska remembered that much, but everything that happened in
between the elevator and the cul-de-sac was a total blank.

George Perez, the hotel's night manager who had a master key to
all the rooms, attracted investigators' attention because he was
seen on hotel surveillance video talking with Budnytska at the
hotel front desk "several times," Foote said.

Then, at 2:16 a.m., there was an odd encounter -- Perez left the
front desk unattended and went into the elevator with Budnytska.
He was gone for approximately 15 minutes, and then returned to
the desk -- alone.

Perez initially told Foote that he helped Budnytska into her
room because she was intoxicated. In fact, he later admitted
that he'd been socializing with Budnytska.

"I was friends with her in the workplace; I also had a
friendship with her outside of the workplace," he said. "I
thought very highly of her."

As the investigation advanced, one new piece of evidence
emerged: Budnytska wasn't just beaten, she also was raped -- and
DNA from her attacker had been recovered from her body. Samples
were obtained voluntarily from Perez and another suspect, a
friend of Budnytska's, Peter Dimouleas.

Budnytska also began to piece together more memories of the
attack, filling in the time gap between when she last was seen
on the elevator cameras and when she was found in the cul-de-sac
... but she could only recall fragments.

"I saw dreams, I saw nightmares," she said. "For me, it was very
difficult to realize what was the reality, what was not the
reality."

Budnytska told Foote that at least two men were responsible --
Caucasian men, possibly with Spanish accents.

"I don't remember the faces. ... I remember, a person putting,
like, a pillow or something," she said. "And then it's dark, you
know. It's just like a feeling that you cannot breathe."

Budnytska even tried hypnosis to clarify her memories. She said
she remembered being carried down a back staircase out into a
car, driving somewhere and being raped in the back seat while
"somebody was laughing."

But surveillance cameras didn't show that, and Foote's
frustration grew, he said.

"We reached a dead end on that point. It just didn't fit," he
said.

He suspected there was more to Budnytska's story than she was
able -- or willing -- to tell.

Like many hotels, the Airport Regency had a key-card security
system that logged each time a guest swipes their key to enter a
room. Security cameras clocked Budnytska entering the elevator
for the final time at 3:41 a.m. But the log of key swipes at her
door showed her entering her room at 3:58 a.m. -- an unexplained
gap of 17 minutes.

That led police to suspect that Budnytska might be a prostitute.
They theorized that during the 17 minutes she had gone to
service a John, an encounter that could have led to the attack.
But Foote said they found "absolutely zilch, nothing to indicate
that she was as prostitute," and decided that was not true.
Ultimately the time gap also could be explained by two separate
clock systems that were not in sync.

For months, the case went nowhere. Meanwhile, Budnytska filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the hotel, citing lax
security. Denying any wrongdoing, the hotel hired a private
investigator named Ken Brennan to investigate her claims.

A former policeman in Long Island, New York, and a former Drug
Enforcement Administration agent, Brennan was fascinated by the
mystery surrounding the case and convinced Foote to share
information.

"I knew there might be a little reluctance to share any
information with me," Brennan said. "I said 'Alan, I'm a good
investigator. I'm not going to mess this up on you -- just let
me run with it for you.'"

One of the first things Foote shared was the DNA results on the
two preliminary suspects. There was no match and both Perez and
Dimouleas were cleared.

"I knew that the answer to the mystery had to be in those
surveillance tapes somewhere," Brennan said. "You had to watch
each and every frame on every video."

Slowly but surely, Brennan eliminated every suspect -- everybody
but one.

"On the video, she goes out of the hotel early in the morning,"
Brennan said. "When she comes back about a half-hour later,
there's a big, large, black man standing with her, and she just
has a quick conversation with him. They get onto the elevator
together."

The man can be seen entering the elevator with Budnytska at 3:41
a.m., then exiting the hotel with a suitcase at 5:28 a.m. But
Brennan thought there was something strange about the way the
suspect gave the suitcase a strange extra tug to get it loose
from a gap in the elevator floor as he was leaving.

"I've done this, and you've done this countless times coming out
of an elevator: did you ever get it stuck so bad that you had to
yank on it like that?" asked Brennan. "A light bulb went off and
I said, 'This is the guy, and she's in that suitcase.'"

Searching for clues to the man's identity on the security tapes,
Brennan noticed that he was frequently accompanied by another
man who had the word "Verado" written on the back of his t-shirt.

An internet search revealed the Mercury Marine company was
producing a new outboard engine model called Verado. Brennan
realized the two men were working at the Miami Boat Show that
was held the week of the crime. Mercury was a major exhibitor,
but none of that company's employees stayed at the Airport
Regency.

Brennan discovered that the only shirts given out during the
boat show were to food court employees working for a company
named Centerplate. About two weeks later, Brennan got a call:
someone remembered a man at one of Centerplate’s locations in
New Orleans who matched the description, who'd been hired for
the boat show out of the New Orleans area.

With the help of a friend inside the New Orleans Police
Department named Capt. Ernest Demma, Brennan found out the
mystery man was working at the Superdome when Hurricane Katrina
hit.

The man's name was Michael Lee Jones. Sure enough, records
showed Jones was staying at the hotel that night.

Unfortunately, in the wake of Katrina, Jones -- like countless
others in New Orleans -- had left. By the time of Brennan's
investigation in 2006, he was no longer with Centerplate and no
one knew where he was.

So Brennan built a master list of the major catering and
concession companies in the country. He called them one-by-one
looking for a Michael Jones.

After a lengthy search, Brennan finally hit upon a company
called Ovations, based in Tampa, Florida. After a subpoena was
issued, the company confirmed that Michael Jones was on its
payroll and managing concessions at a minor league baseball park
in Frederick, Maryland.

Private detective: 'I'm going to be coming for you'

In spring 2006, Jones was living in a modest apartment in
Frederick, 1,000 miles away from the Airport Regency in Miami.
Foote was reluctant to collect a DNA sample from a man he
believed was "just another lead.”

But Brennan was certain and convincing.

In April 2006, Foote interviewed Jones, who confirmed he was in
Miami working at the boat show and staying at the Airport
Regency when Inna Budnytska was attacked. But he denied ever
having sex with anybody at the hotel and said he would
"absolutely" provide a DNA sample.

It would take months for the DNA test to come back and, in the
meantime, Brennan made his own trip to Maryland and got Jones to
meet him at the ballpark.

"I interviewed him for three days," Brennan said, "and basically
he told me, you know, 'I don't know what you're talking about, I
don't know who you're talking about.'"

Brennan concluded those sessions with one final message: "I'm
going to be back, and I'm going to be coming for you."

When Jones' DNA results matched DNA found at the crime scene, he
was arrested and interrogated.

He maintained his total innocence "right to the very end, the
bitter end," Brennan said.

Jones was charged with sexual battery and kidnapping, but the
case nearly fell apart before it went to trial.

Brennan believed that after beating and raping Budnytska in his
room, Jones stuffed her in his suitcase, walked out of the hotel
without attracting the attention of the night manager George
Perez, and drove off at 5:31 a.m.

His theory was that Jones dumped the body, turned around, and
made it back to the hotel at 6:21 a.m. with time to spare before
he was to start work that day at the boat show. He sauntered
into the hotel restaurant at 7:59 a.m. and joined his friend at
breakfast. Then they headed out to the parking lot and off to
work.

But Budnytska refused to accept that theory, instead sticking to
her original story that the attack happened in her room. And
most of all, she'd originally told police she'd been attacked by
a number of Caucasian men, not a lone African American man.

Her muddy memory could have been the result of the massive head
trauma she sustained, or perhaps Jones slipped her some kind of
drug. In any case, she made a flimsy witness.

"So unfortunately, the prosecution has to look at the fact that:
Is a jury going to believe this flip-flopping?" Foote said.

Besides the circumstantial evidence on the surveillance video,
the case started getting thin. The DNA match only proved that
sex took place -- not necessarily rape. Under interrogation,
Jones never confessed to Brennan or Foote. The suitcase never
was recovered. And unfortunately, just like Michael Jones's
rental car, his hotel room had been cleaned countless times in
the year before he was ever identified, probably destroying any
evidence.

"We believe that they couldn't prove the case beyond a
reasonable doubt," said Jones' defense attorney, C. Michael
Cornely.

Jones was charged with a number of felonies in Budnytska’s case
that stemmed from raping, kidnapping, and beating her. But,
instead of having the case go to trial, he worked out a deal
with Miami prosecutors in 2006 in which he pleaded guilty to one
count of sexual battery with a weapon and aggravated battery in
Budnytska’s case in return for having the more severe charges
dropped. His prison sentence was just two years.

"I was angry," Budnytska said. "I couldn't do anything. I'm not
familiar with the justice system. But I was upset inside."

But Brennan suspected this was not Jones' first crime.

Brennan knew Jones' work took him to cities all over the
country, giving him plenty of opportunity to meet new women and
then disappear.

Brennan convinced the Miami-Dade police to enter Jones' DNA into
Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the FBI's national database,
which they did in late 2006. Within a few years, three new hits
came up for Jones’ DNA: a case in Colorado Springs, Colorado,
and two cases in New Orleans.

Det. Terry Thrumston of the Colorado Springs Police Department’s
sex-crime unit, received a call in 2007 notifying her there was
a match in CODIS that connected Jones to a December 2005 cold
case.

In that case, Jennifer Roessler, 41, was seen leaving a local
convenience store just minutes before she was attacked.

"She was by herself," said Thrumston. "She was a woman, alone,
walking at 2:30, 3 o'clock in the morning.”

Jones was working concessions at the Colorado Springs World
Arena in December 2005. It was about nine months after the 2005
attack on Inna Budnystka in Miami was reported and about three
months after Jones left New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina, authorities said.

"She accepted a ride from a stranger, who took her back to her
apartment," Thrumston added. "He asked for a drink of water;
then she asked him to leave. He then sexually assaults her."

Roessler's decision to let the man into her apartment raised the
possibility the sex was consensual. The case had gone cold until
the CODIS match hit on Jones.

Then there were two DNA hits in New Orleans. One was for the
case of woman, who agreed to be called “Rachel,” who was
visiting New Orleans for Jazz Fest in May 2003 when she reported
that a man offered her a ride, then her drove to a secluded area
and assaulted her.

"She was able to describe exactly what had happened to her six
years later," Thrumston said.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence against Jones was a
composite sketch “Rachel” made with New Orleans police of the
man who raped her.

"It looked almost identical to what Michael Lee Jones looked
[like] in the courtroom," said Thrumston.

Lorraine Gautreaux, the victim in the second New Orleans case,
also had a similar story. Gautreaux told police she had been
raped in June 2003 by a man who had offered her a ride.

“I [was] walking down the street, when he snatched me up and he
put me in his car. He took me somewhere around City Park in New
Orleans,” Gautreaux said. “He had me pinned to where I couldn’t
even move… At one point he put a knife to my throat, told me if
I’d go to the police, he would find me again one day and kill
me…. I was scared to death.”

Gautreaux said she also believed “he had done this before” based
on his demeanor: “He was calm, cool and collected, he never
raised his voice… ‘cause he knew exactly what he was doing.”

Both New Orleans cases had sat unsolved for years until the
CODIS hits.

In July 2008, as Jones’ Florida prison sentence for the
Budnytska’s case was coming to an end, he was extradited to
Colorado Springs to stand trial for attacking Roessler.

Roesseler died from natural causes unrelated to her rape before
she had a chance to testify against Jones by the time he went to
trial in 2009, so prosecutors called on Budnytska and the New
Orleans to serve as witnesses.

Jones pleaded not guilty to sexual assault in the Colorado case.
At trial, the defense tried to argue the sex with Roessler was
consensual, but with DNA hits from multiple women all claiming
rape, the jury didn't buy it.

"Within a couple hours, the jury came back and said he's
guilty," Thrumston recalled.

Jones was sentenced to 24 years to life in prison for the attack
on Roessler.

"I feel happy," Budnytska said of Jones' sentence. "The criminal
is where he's supposed to be, and he is never gonna hurt nobody
in the future."

https://abcnews.go.com/US/serial-rapist-loose-years-abandoned- suitcase-put-stop/story?id=62091508

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