As students return to school, they should take caution when visiting the Charles River Esplanade in light of a series of sexual assaults in the area, the Suffolk County district attorney said last week.
“Each late summer brings to Boston and Cambridge a new crop of students unaware of these attacks,” said DA Daniel Conley in a statement. “As we educate them on basic safety and how to approach the Esplanade at night, we’re also reminding long-term residents that this attacker remains at large and could still be active in the area.”
There are at least four separate incidents of young women being attacked at night in the area close to the Esplanade by an unidentified assailant since 2007, according to his statement, and three of these incidents resulted in rape. The most recent incident named in the release was on July 14 last year.
The victims, all female, were attacked in different parts of the Esplanade. Some were not even in the area at all; one was held at knifepoint on Beacon Street and made to walk to the Esplanade, where she was raped and robbed. The case dates back to 2006, when a man who police believe is the Esplanade attacker assaulted a woman at Joe Moakley Park.
Authorities have been unable to identify the assailant, who they believe is a single person, at press time, said DA spokesman Jake Ward. Victims described their attacker as a bald and clean-shaven black man in his twenties or thirties with a medium-to-large figure and an average height, the press release said.
The DA’s office has sent alerts aimed at incoming students every summer since the attacks began, Ward said.
“We have to assume that he might still be active in the area,” he added.
Though the case has been unsolved for more than four years, law enforcement said they are continuing to seriously pursue the issue.
“Our citizens should be assured that we bring to bear on this investigation the full resources of three law enforcement agencies, from patrol units and detectives to criminalists and prosecutors, and the person who did these crimes should likewise be assured that we won’t stop until we take him off the street,” said Marian McGovern, the superintendent of the State Police, in the DA’s statement.
“At the same time, we urge people out in public to be aware and minimize their risks,” McGovern added.
The Esplanade, a popular place for Boston University Students to jog and ride bikes, runs along one side of the Charles River.
Students and others on the Esplanade can take caution by traveling in groups and by paying attention to their surroundings &- in particular, by not texting or using headphones, said Ward. Students should also never get into a stranger’s car, he said, and the statement advises avoiding one-on-one contact with strangers in general.
“People should not be afraid to go down to the Esplanade, [but] they should use common sense,” Ward said.
Anyone with knowledge of the attacker should inform the Massachusetts State Police or the Boston Police Department, the DA’s statement said.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
