Trial Date Set For Rape Suspect

A Feb. 5 trial date has been set for a former Seattle man accused of multiple attacks and burglaries in 1986 that led police to name the suspect the ``North End rapist.''

Alan Lewis Meirhofer, 36, has pleaded not guilty to six felony counts in which prosecutors say he entered homes wearing a mask and wielding a knife before assaulting or raping his victims.

Two of those charges filed in King County Superior Court are for sexual assaults, only a few hours apart, of a boy and a girl, both middle-school students, after their mothers left for work.

Bail was set at $250,000 for Meirhofer, of Bellingham, who is being held in King County Jail pending trial. He was in prison on a rape conviction in Whatcom County in a case that involved a young boy.

Seattle police said they got a break in their search in September 1987, when Meirhofer was arrested in Bellingham for connection with two sexual assaults on a boy. In a search of Meirhofer's residence, police found a jewelry box, jewelry and photographs belonging to the family of one of the Seattle victims.

A roommate of one of the Seattle burglary victims also later identified Meirhofer as the man who broke into their home.

Deputy Prosecutor Rebecca Roe said it will not be possible to use DNA, or genetic fingerprinting, in the prosecution because results of the testing by a New York laboratory were inconclusive. The charges were filed now because the statute of limitations was about to run out, she said.

Meirhofer is charged with first-degree assault, two counts of first-degree rape and three counts of first-degree burglary in connection with attacks in December 1986 in North Seattle.

Roe said in court documents that Meirhofer entered a Green Lake-area home by a sliding glass door at 2:30 a.m. Dec. 5, wearing a mask and carrying a knife, having earlier cut phone lines to the home. Two women barricaded themselves in a bedroom as Meirhofer allegedly continued to pursue them. The 13-year-old son of one of the women fled out a window to get help. Meirhofer dropped his keys and a glove he had been wearing during the attack, the documents said.

About three weeks later, also in the Green Lake area, a 13-year-old girl was sleeping about 5:30 a.m. after her mother left for work when a man entered the residence, prosecutor said. Again the phone lines were severed. The girl noticed the man's body odor, gloves and a mask before he tied her with an electrical cord and raped her, according to the documents.

At 6:45 a.m., Meirhofer went into a home on Ravenna Avenue where, masked and carrying a knife, he bound a 13-year-old boy, then raped him, the court documents said. A sister of the boy who had entered the room during the attack described the assailant, including that he was unshaven and had body odor.

Meirhofer was sentenced to more than nine years in prison for the Bellingham rape.