Trouble Started Early in Life for Rape Suspect

The woman still lives in the same Belmont Shore house. She got a dog and an alarm system and has healed since that balmy summer night. Thirteen years ago, as her three children slumbered, a man pounced on her in her darkened bedroom. He wore only gray underwear.

“I talked him out of it, before he tried anything,” the woman recalled last week. “I told him my kids could wake up, that my husband would be home soon.”

“Please don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me, I have three little kids,” she remembers telling him.

“He said, ‘I won’t hurt you. I’m just hungry.’ ”

Padding into her kitchen, the near-naked intruder held her wrists high behind her. She offered to cook something.

The man stared into the freezer, and a few minutes later, clutching frozen tortillas, sliced turkey and blue ice pops, walked out the back of her house.

Mark Wayne Rathbun, then 19, was arrested about an hour later, just down the street. A month later, he pleaded guilty to burglary and false imprisonment by violence. After 10 months, he was out of jail.

Today, Rathbun, 32, will be arraigned on 64 counts of burglary, forcible rape, rape with a foreign object, oral copulation and sodomy. The charges cover just some of the 31 attacks police attribute to a single man, widely referred to as the Belmont Shore rapist, because many of the attacks occurred in that area of Long Beach. Rathbun is being held in lieu of $11-million bail.

The crime against the Belmont Shore woman, who asked not to be identified because of her children, was possibly Act One. Although no sex crime occurred, the incident chillingly resembled the later attacks, in all of which the man was nude or in briefs.

The case indicates that Rathbun -- the son of a soldier killed in Vietnam and a deeply religious mother who supported them as a waitress in the Philippines and cafeteria cook in Long Beach -- was troubled early on.

At 15, he was arrested on suspicion of being a peeping Tom. Shortly after turning 18, he pleaded guilty to two charges of misdemeanor trespassing.

Five months later, he was arrested after he sneaked into a Belmont Shore house and took a beer. He pleaded guilty again to misdemeanor trespassing and spent a month in County Jail and a year on probation.

He was 19 when he leaped onto the Belmont Shore woman as she slept.

This from a man who, as a boy, had encouraged his mother to evangelize with a Catholic group called the Legion of Mary.

Rathbun’s tale begins around 1967, when his mother, Alice Rathbun, now 75, met Joshua Godined while he was stationed at a naval base in the Philippines. She was a waitress at the base. They dated for a year or so, but never married, and in 1969 Godined was killed in an ambush at the Mekong River.

Mark was born Jan. 20, 1970. He was 5 when Alice told him about his father, about how he died. Mark’s longing for a dad, she said, was a lifelong ache.

“He wanted to have a father,” Alice Rathbun said, “and after that he always blamed me that he didn’t have a father.”

An Average Student

Alice raised Mark alone in the city of Olongapo. Mark learned English from American neighbor children, and a teacher thought Mark had leadership potential because of his English. But Mark was comfortable, she said, being an average student.

He would ditch school to surf in his teens, but even in grade school, Mark had cut classes.

“Sometimes when I’d say, ‘How come you didn’t go to school?’ ” Alice Rathbun said, “he says, ‘If I had a father, he would spank me.’ ”

Alice had two sisters in Long Beach. When Mark was 14, she decided to move there. As a ninth-grader, Mark attended Rogers Middle School. In August 1985, a month before he started at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, police arrested him for the first time.

To boyhood friends, he was known as a peaceful guy with a big grin, a clean-cut guy who never expressed anger.

When the others partied using heavy drugs, Mark was the one who stayed clean. “We partied and we were up to no good,” said Chris Van Mulligen, a boyhood friend. “Mark wasn’t.”

His junior yearbook photo is of a grinning Mark, age 17, in the white uniform of the junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. But before his senior year he dropped out. He eventually earned a diploma through adult school. He jumped from job to job -- bagging groceries, grooming dogs, delivering Christmas trees, working as a helper to a handyman and a plumber.

In the mid-1990s, he moved to Seattle. Alice Rathbun remembers that a flier advertising get-rich commercial fishing jobs in Alaska prompted his move.

A flurry of traffic citations places Rathbun there by Oct. 1, 1995. Police cited him repeatedly for driving without a license, without insurance, with an open container of alcohol -- so many tickets and failures to appear that bench warrants were issued for his arrest. On various traffic stops he was arrested and jailed a day. Then he would plead guilty, get credit for the night spent in jail and be released.

The first two of the sexual assaults that eventually would be linked to the Belmont Shore rapist occurred in Seattle while Rathbun was there, on May 13 and Aug. 1, 1996.

After one victim helped a police artist produce a composite, Long Beach Police Cmdr. Linda Beardslee said, the rapist always covered his face, the victim’s face or both, and shielded his hands with things like gloves or socks.

The last court record placing Rathbun in Seattle was in October 1996, when he was arrested and jailed on more traffic warrants.

He returned to Long Beach late that year. On Jan. 17, 1997, the first Southern California attack occurred. A woman was assaulted in Long Beach near Vista and Temple streets -- not far from the house Rathbun had broken into in 1989.

Four more women were attacked that year, but the frequency of the assaults increased in 1998, when three women were attacked in May, three in July, one in September and another in November. The predator continued his pattern of entering through unlocked doors and windows.

Police only late last week revealed that three of the women were attacked a second time by the same man -- a frail 77-year-old Long Beach woman was sexually assaulted twice in 17 days and knew by voice and appearance that it was the same man.

By that summer, anxiety gripped the neighborhoods of east Long Beach. Pepper spray often sold out at Billings Hardware in the heart of Belmont Shore. The Belmont Shore Business Assn. offered a $10,000 reward. A flier with a composite drawing of a man wearing a knit ski cap snowed the large communities of the east side.

On Sept. 18, 1998, the assault of a 54-year-old woman in Belmont Shore led to the much-heralded arrest of Jeff Grant, a city employee who ran the adult softball leagues. Bloodhounds had led police from the victim’s home to his apartment building.

Grant, then engaged, denied attacking anyone, and his fiance and family stood by him. He was jailed for three months before DNA testing exonerated him.

Wrongly Accused

A federal jury would later find the city of Long Beach liable for $1.7 million for wrongfully arresting and detaining Grant. The city has appealed the verdict.

While Grant was in jail, another assault occurred, but police did not link the incident to the serial rapist because the previous attacks had been of older woman and closer to Belmont Shore. In addition, police thought they had their suspect. But the DNA evidence tied four rapes together. Four years later, it would tie the cases to Rathbun.

As time went on, the number of attacks continued to grow, and the rapist’s strike zone widened across the Orange County line, to a trailer park in Los Alamitos where two senior citizens were attacked a half-hour apart.

One victim, 74, lives in Huntington Beach. She was watching the 12th inning of an Angel game this August and crocheting doilies when she heard a strange noise. “I thought it was the possums,” she said in an interview.

Later, she checked the sliding door she kept slightly open to let in fresh air. There was nothing unusual so she went to bed. Within minutes, she heard a suspicious thump.

When she dialed 911, a man grabbed her waist from behind, she recalled. He threw her to the ground, tried to cover her face with his gloved hand and tried to pull off her underwear.

She kicked and screamed, trying to pull the rough white shop towel wrapped around his head.

“I was too mad at him to be afraid for my life,” she said. “I was furious.”

The man “came in ready to rape me,” wearing only a mesh thong, she said. She tried to poke his eyes, but he was too tall. She then grabbed his genitals, and he fled through the sliding door.

Police, as they had for years, warned the public. They also noted that many women had fought off their attacker, scratching and leaving visible injuries. A bite, in fact, would help break the case, police said.

On Nov. 7, a 30-year-old Long Beach woman fought off a man who attacked her in her house, biting his finger in the process. An armada of patrol units sealed off the neighborhood. A neighbor pointed officers toward a man on a bike. He said he thought he had seen the man run across his yard.

Police arrested Rathbun, who had an injured finger. Rathbun, who two days earlier had volunteered as a poll worker on election day, was arrested on suspicion of possessing a crack pipe, and voluntarily submitted to a saliva swab to provide a DNA sample.

Detectives followed him until test results matched Rathbun’s DNA to a dozen other cases, police said. Rathbun called his mother that night and said to expect police at their apartment. Then he hung up.

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A string of attacks

A Long Beach man, Mark Wayne Rathbun, 32, faces numerous charges in a series of rapes over a six-year period. A timeline shows when the attacks occurred, by date, time and age of victim. The crimes took place in east Long Beach -- many in Belmont Shore -- unless otherwise noted.

1996

Sexual attack -- May 13, 12:45 a.m., victim’s age: 29 (Seattle)

Sexual attack -- Aug. 1, 4:31 a.m., victim’s age: 40 (Seattle); DNA evidence found

1997

Sexual attack -- Jan. 17, 12:01 a.m., victim’s age: 40; DNA evidence found

Sexual attack -- May 7, 10:31 p.m., victim’s age: 73

Nonsexual attack -- July 21, 11:35 p.m., victim’s age: 40

Nonsexual attack -- July 30, 12:20 a.m., victim’s age: 74

Nonsexual attack -- Aug. 10, 11:38 p.m., victim’s age: 56

1998

Sexual attack -- May 13, 11:45 p.m., victim’s age: 52; DNA evidence found

Sexual attack -- May 24, 11:29 p.m., victim’s age: 78

Nonsexual attack -- May 25, 1:49 a.m., victim’s age: 29

Nonsexual attack -- July 3, 2 a.m., victim’s age: 29, 5:19 a.m., victim’s age: 49

Sexual attack -- July 31, 4:27 a.m., victim’s age: 39; DNA evidence found

Sexual attack -- Sept. 18, 11:25 p.m., victim’s age: 54; DNA evidence found

Sexual attack -- Nov. 22, 3 a.m., victim’s age: 32; DNA evidence found

1999

Nonsexual attack -- Mar. 29, victim’s age: 12:52 a.m., 32

Sexual attack -- Aug. 4, 2 a.m., victim’s age: 77

Sexual attack -- Aug. 21, 12:49 a.m., victim’s age: 77; DNA evidence found

2000

Sexual attack -- Apr. 2, 1:23 a.m., victim’s age: 76; DNA evidence found

Sexual attack -- June 11, 1:10 a.m., victim’s age: 51 (Huntington Beach); DNA evidence found

2001

Sexual attack -- Dec. 30, 2 a.m., victim’s age: 50

2002

Sexual attack -- Jan. 27, 11 p.m., victim’s age: 60

Sexual attack -- April 6, 2 a.m., victim’s age: 54

Nonsexual attack -- Apr. 21, 3:50 a.m., victim’s age: 74; 4:30 a.m., 58

Sexual attack -- May 11, 1 a.m., victim’s age: 72 (Los Alamitos); DNA evidence found

Nonsexual attack -- May 11, 1:30 a.m., victim’s age: 69 (Los Alamitos)

Sexual attack -- June 26, 2:35 a.m., victim’s age: 60 ; DNA evidence found

Nonsexual attack -- Aug. 13, 11:33 p.m., victim’s age: 74 (Huntington Beach); DNA evidence found

Nonsexual attack -- Aug. 15, 2:05 a.m., victim’s age: 33; DNA evidence found

Nonsexual attack -- Nov. 7, 1 a.m., victim’s age: 36

Source: Long Beach Police Department

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Times researcher Lynn Marshall in Seattle and staff writer Mai Tran in Huntington Beach contributed to this report.