Four times between the winters of 2002 and 2005, a blue-eyed man wearing a ski mask and dark clothes crept quietly into the bedrooms of women in Bloomington, Ill., and raped them.
He told the women — all in their 20s and single — that he'd studied them, tracking their habits. He threatened one woman's family if she resisted, reciting their address lest she doubt he knew where to find them.
"I've been watching you," prosecutors say the rapist told another victim as he held a knife to her throat on a December night in 2002.
Jury selection is expected to begin today in the trial of the man prosecutors say was the attacker: Jeff Pelo, a 17-year veteran of the Bloomington Police Department and married father of three.
Pelo, 43, who has pleaded not guilty, faces 28 counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault and four counts of home invasion. If convicted of all the charges, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.