The “East Coast Rapist” sentenced to life imprisonment

On Friday, the “East Coast Rapist”, Aaron Thomas was sentenced to life in prison after over a decade of sexual assaults in the Virginia and Maryland areas. Thomas pleaded guilty in 2011 for abducting three teenage girls in which he raped two of them on Halloween night in 2009. The 41-year-old originally pleaded insanity, claiming that he engaged in self-mutilation and experienced an alternate personality by the name of Erwin but a psychologist testified that Thomas was faking his symptoms.

Thomas’s assaults date back to 1997 with the Halloween abductions as the last in his series. The girls whom he assaulted ranged between the ages of 16 and 17 and were coerced with a lighter in the shape of a handgun. Thomas is also awaiting charges for a rape and abduction committed in 2001. As of now, he has received three life terms as well as 80 years in federal prison.