Massachusetts Fugitive Wanted for 35-Year-Old Rape Cases Arrested After Los Angeles Police Chase
Man wanted for the rapes of two women in Massachusetts in 1989 was caught after an hour-long police chase in Los Angeles on Thursday.
The 71-year-old Stephen Paul Gale was caught after leading cops on a chase, a spokesman for the US Marshals Service told CNN. CNN station KABC reported that the chase began just before 4 p.m. as Gale drove on the 405 Freeway at a normal speed and followed most of the traffic signs.
The news statement says that Gale was charged in May with four counts of aggravated rape, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of armed robbery in Massachusetts.
A news release from Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan says that Gale is accused of sexually assaulting two female employees of a clothing shop in Framingham, Massachusetts, which is about 20 miles west of Boston. The alleged crimes happened almost 35 years ago.
Officials say that genetic genealogy and DNA evidence found at the scene of the crime helped detectives figure out that Gale was the suspect.
Combining DNA proof with traditional genealogy to find biological links between people is what genetic genealogy is all about.
There is a good chance that this DNA proof and the statistical results showing how likely it is that the two people are related are what led to the arrest warrant being issued today, according to a news release from May.
Someone who was hurt told CNN station WFXT, “None of this has ever left our lives.” “We’ve always been like this.” This guy needs to be caught and taken off the streets right away.
The news release says that on December 27, 1989, Gale went into the Hit or Miss shop on Route 9 and pushed two female employees to the back of the shop. That person was made to “empty the money from a locked safe, the store’s register, and her pocketbook into a bag,” the news release said. The second victim was then made to lock the store’s doors, and both women were forced to take off their clothes. They were then each put in a separate room, according to the video.
“He raped both women while putting the gun to their heads,” she said. They ran out the back fire door and into a nearby house when the suspect came back to the front of the store, the report said.
The women, an 18-year-old worker and the 29-year-old manager of the clothing store Hit or Miss, talked to CNN station WCVB.
“He had a very clean shave.” He looked really good. Not business clothes—khakis, a jacket, and a shirt—the younger woman said in an interview in 2021. “He made me get to the back office by crawling on my hands and knees naked.” That’s also where the attack took place.
“Something that sticks out in my mind is how he kept telling me, ‘Don’t look at me, don’t look at me,'” she said.
She told him she kept looking back at him. She was 29 years old. Then he would catch me and hit me in the head with the gun. He would then say, “Don’t look at me, don’t look at me, or I’ll blow you away,” she told WCVB.
When years went by with no new information or charges, the women felt like no one was paying attention to them.
The former manager said, “I started this with some hope and it was just shattered. It dropped me to a low level of disappointment and made me feel really alone and worthless.” “I felt really small, unimportant, and like I had been forgotten.”
McCarron told CNN that the Framingham Police Department, the Massachusetts State Police, and the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office asked US Marshals from the District of Massachusetts to start working on the case in February.
In a May X post, the US Marshals Service named Gale as a suspect in the case and said he was likely living under several names, such as Stephen Pisarcik, John Rossi, and Paul Costa.
There was a $5,000 prize for information that led to his arrest.
“I want to thank the victims for being so brave.” “We would never have been able to finally catch this horrible criminal without their ongoing help and courage,” Framingham Police Chief Lester Baker said in the release.
“It’s finally happened after more than thirty years, and I’m glad I can tell them and their families that all their hard work was not in vain.” The people of Framingham have been afraid of this crime for many years, but no one has given up hope or forgotten about them, Baker said.
CNN is trying to find out where Gale is now that he has been arrested if he has hired a lawyer, and if he is facing more charges.