An Arlington, Virginia, man was arrested at his home Tuesday night and charged in connection with a string of sexual assaults that occurred in the D.C. neighborhood of Georgetown in the late 2000s, authorities said Wednesday.
Ernesto Ramon Mercado, 54, has been charged with three counts of first-degree sexual abuse and five counts of second-degree sexual abuse, with aggravating circumstances on all counts, after being forensically linked to five home invasion rape cases that occurred in the Georgetown area between 2008 and 2012. Mercado has also been linked to a sixth sexual assault in College Park, Maryland, just off the University of Maryland campus.
“Thanks to DNA evidence from the rape kits of courageous survivors, improvements in DNA technology, and the tireless efforts of our law enforcement partners and our prosecutors, we were able to link these six rapes,” U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves said in a news release. “Once we had a DNA profile of the suspect, the team used every forensic tool at its disposal, as well as old-fashioned detective work, to identify the person behind this DNA profile. That hard work led to yesterday’s arrest of Ernesto Mercado.”
At the time of the sexual assaults, the then-unknown offender had been dubbed the “Georgetown-College Park Cuddler Rapist.” The five sexual assaults in D.C. took place between June 26, 2008 and Aug. 31, 2012.
“In the media reports at the time, this suspect was labeled as both the ‘College Park Cuddler’ and the ‘Georgetown Cuddler.’ Over the years, this term has only caused more harm to our victims. This man is a predator, and his intent was not to cuddle these women, but instead, his intent was to rape them, and it was only when they would wake up that the assault would end and he would flee,” said Det. Alexander Mac Bean, with the sexual assault cold case unit in the Criminal Investigations Division of the Metropolitan Police Department.
According to authorities, Mercado would break into homes in the late night or predawn hours and assault these women. Many survivors reported being asleep when they were first assaulted and waking up during the act, at which time the attacker fled.
Mercado is believed to have stalked his victims, targeting those alone, sleeping or intoxicated, police said.
The arrest was the result of the Cold Case Sexual Assault Initiative, a joint effort between D.C. police and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to reinvestigate and close previously unsolved sexual assaults.
“For the past 16 years, our Sexual Assault Unit detectives have continued to follow up on leads and connect the cases together — looking for patterns, evidence and a suspect,” D.C. police Chief Pamela Smith said at a news conference Wednesday. “We know that people often want answers right away in cases, but our detectives never gave up, and today’s announcement speaks to their unending commitment to bring justice to victims.”
Mercado appeared in court Wednesday, where the judge ordered a preliminary hearing be scheduled for Oct. 10.
The investigation is ongoing. Anyone who was sexually assaulted or who may have information related to these or additional cases is encouraged to call the D.C. police at 202-727-9099 or text 50411. You can remain anonymous.
‘I woke up with someone on top of me’
According to court documents, Mercado was involved in at least five offenses in the Georgetown area.
Three of the first victims described awaking early in the morning in 2008 to find a tall Hispanic man in their homes. Around that time, a Georgetown University spokesperson told the Georgetown Voice’s “Vox Populi” daily newspaper that the Department of Public Safety would be increasing patrols in those areas.
In another case, in June 2008, court documents say a man broke into a woman’s basement apartment and attempted to sexually assault her in her bed.
The woman had been drinking with friends, came home around 3 a.m. and then went to bed, court documents said. A couple of hours later, “I woke up with someone on top of me,” the woman told a nurse at the time. The man then fled, running up the stairs from her home.
Nearly a year later, in July 2009, another woman reported she had woken up to a man on top of her. The woman said she thought she was dreaming and “then realized that someone was having sex with her,” court documents said. The man then ran out.
In a post on its site in August 2009, The Georgetown Voice’s editorial board said “the rapist continues to pose a risk to women’s safety on campus and in the surrounding neighborhood.”
In 2012, a woman in Northwest D.C. reported the screen to her bedroom window had been cut and she awoke to find her undergarments feeling “wet,” after returning home from a night out. She “vaguely recalled someone (being) in her room but cannot give a description,” the documents read.
The woman got a sexual assault exam performed in New York, and reported the incident to authorities when she returned to D.C.
In a follow-up interview in 2016, the same woman recalled being in “a foggy dream state” at the time and had attempted to the push the man off her “then seeing him walk out her door.”
How authorities zeroed in on the Arlington man
Evidence from the sexual assaults were entered into the CODIS database for routine search. The database holds DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence and missing persons. The male DNA profiles matched one another, indicating that the same person was linked in the assaults.
A genetic genealogy testing led to Mercado’s identification. Forensic genealogy is a technique in which investigators use a known DNA sample to build a family tree of possible connections based on DNA profiles from publicly accessible genealogy websites.
For the past several weeks, police obtained a warrant to get swabs of Mercado’s driver side door handle of his car and the inside of his cheek. Testing of the cheek swabs collected from Mercado found that his DNA profile matched evidence collected from one of the previous assaults.
“As yesterday’s arrest demonstrates, advancements in technology and collaboration among law enforcement partners can lead to breakthroughs in cases that have previously gone unsolved,” said FBI agent David Geist in a statement.
WTOP’s Abigail Constantino contributed to this report.
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