WASHINGTON — More than a decade after an unknown predator terrorized young women in the Georgetown area with a string of home invasion rapes, police say the man responsible has been arrested.
Ernesto Ramon Mercado, 54, of Arlington, faces three counts of first-degree sexual abuse with aggravating circumstances and five counts of second-degree sexual abuse with aggravating circumstances. Mercado was arrested Tuesday and made his initial appearance Wednesday afternoon in D.C. Superior Court, where he was ordered heled without bond.
Between 2008 and 2012, officials say Mercado forced his way into his victims' homes late at night after they'd returned from evenings out. Because of the darkness and confusion, many of the women were unable to provide a detailed description of their assailant.
"He targeted sleeping and intoxicated victims in their homes with the intent of raping them," lead Detective Alexander Mac Bean said Wednesday during a press conference announcing Mercado's arrest. "Once his victims woke up, he fled the scene.”
The investigation has been ongoing for at least 16 years, and has been in the hands of MPD's Cold Case Team for the last 10. According to an affidavit filed in D.C. Superior Court, the eventual break in the case came from a DNA sample submitted for genetic genealogical testing in 2019. That sample eventually led investigators to Mercado as their chief suspect.
This week, a judge in Arlington County signed a warrant allowing police to collect buccal swab samples from Mercado to test against DNA recovered from a 2008 assault. A lab returned a matching result on Tuesday, and Mercado was taken into custody the same day on charges accusing him of five assaults in the Georgetown area and one near the University of Maryland College Park.
An Infamous Case Gone Cold
The string of sexual assaults — all targeting the same type of victim, using the same M.O., largely confined to the same part of D.C. — garnered intense media coverage at the time. At the time, many outlets took to calling the serial rapist the "Georgetown Cuddler." Mac Bean said the name, which downplayed the actual crimes in the case, did even more harm to those already victimized.
“Over the years, this term has only caused more harm to our victims," he said. "This man is a predator and his intent was not to cuddle these women but instead his intent was to rape them.”
The "cuddler" name was also used to describe another suspect accused of assaulting multiple male Georgetown University students in 2010. That man, Todd M. Thomas, was convicted of burglary and fourth-degree sex abuse against multiple victims and sentenced in 2014 to seven years in prison.
An affidavit filed in the case this week contains many of the original report narratives from previous detectives assigned to investigate the assaults. In them, the victims, all college-age women, recounted the horror of going to bed alone and waking up with an unknown man on top of them. During one assault that occurred in June 2008 in a house on Tunlaw Road NW, the victim said she woke up to feel a man's breath on her neck as he attempted to force sexual intercourse At least two victims woke up to find their assailant was already raping them. One victim didn't wake up during the rape at all, and only realized she'd been assaulted in the morning.
“The seriousness of these offenses and the complexity of investigating them is part of the reason there is a longer statute of limitations for our most serious sexual assault offenses than there is for most other crimes that we prosecute,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves said during the press conference Wednesday.
Despite the profile of the case, the investigation yielded little for years. DNA rape kits conducted on several of the victims matched the assailants to one another, but not to a suspect.
“While this was an important break through, it only showed that the same person committed these six offenses, it did not tell us who the perpetrator was,” Graves said.
It was a DNA sample submitted for genetic genealogical testing in 2019 that ultimately led police to Mercado. But even then, investigators struggled to make a match.
According to the affidavit filed in the case, police surveilled Mercado for weeks in an attempt to obtain a DNA sample — even going so far as installing a pole camera on his block in Arlington and obtaining a warrant to attach a GPS tracking device to his car. A judge eventually signed a warrant to collect a sample from Mercado's car door handle, but that failed to produce a viable DNA profile. Police then obtained the warrant to swab Mercado's cheek. According to police, an analysis of the DNA in that swab matched the DNA believed to belong to the assailant in the Tunlaw Road assault.
A Limited Profile
The affidavit filed in D.C. Superior Court provides an incomplete picture of Mercado, who is now 54 and living in Arlington since 2011.
According to police, he graduated from the University of Maryland College Park in 1995 and lived in a home in the 4200 block of Underwood Street in University Park until moving to Virginia. The house was located a little more than a mile from where a November 2009 assault occurred.
Between 2000 and 2017, Mercado worked for a company located in the 1600 block of K Street NW, near the Georgetown area.
Shockingly, the affidavit, which was prepared by Mac Bean, describes more than a dozen encounters between Mercado and police during early morning hours over the time span of the assaults. None of the encounters ever resulted in Mercado's arrest — which could have led to a DNA sample being taken.
According to Mac Bean's affidavit, between 2000 and 2011, Mercado was stopped at least 19 times between 11 p.m. and 5:15 a.m. One of those stops occurred in September 2010, just a few weeks after the fifth alleged assault, which occurred in the 3500 block of S Street NW, and in the same block as the second alleged assault, in the 3500 block of O Street NW. According to the affidavit, police spotted Mercado parking his car and walking around the neighborhood at 2:54 a.m. When approached, he was reportedly "evasive" toward their questions and couldn't provide a legitimate reason for being in the area.
In addition to the six charged assaults, police said Mercado is suspected in dozens of other additional "Peeping Tom," voyeurism, burglary and home invasion sexual assaults in Georgetown and College Park between at least 2006 and 2012. In some of those instances, according to the affidavit, Mercado is believed to have victimized several homes on more than one occasion and "in several instances victimized the same woman more than once."
According to the affidavit, while police were monitoring Mercado they saw him on multiple occasions leaving his home in the late evening and early morning hours and driving around the Northern Virginia and Georgetown area, leading them to believe he may have been "performing some type of rideshare service." The affidavit says police were unable to confirm what Mercado was doing on those occasions.
Mercado is currently scheduled to appear in court next on Oct. 10.
Police continue to search for any other possible victims. If you, or someone you know, was attacked or recognizes Mercado, police say to call detectives at 202-727-9099 or text 50411. You can remain anonymous.