Suspect Admits To Rape Of 74-Year-Old Birdwatcher In Central Park
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- An ex-convict drifter pleaded guilty Tuesday to attacking a 74-year-old birdwatcher in Central Park, in a case that prompted calls for tougher penalties for sex offenders.
David Albert Mitchell, 43, mumbled "yes" in response to a judge's questions as he pleaded guilty to rape and robbery Tuesday. He was expected to get at least 25 years in prison at his Oct. 16 sentencing.
His lawyers declined to comment afterward.
Mitchell has been jailed since his arrest a year ago.
Manhattan prosecutors accused Mitchell of assaulting the woman in broad daylight on Sept. 12 near Strawberry Fields. The site near 72nd Street serves as a memorial to John Lennon, and is one of the busiest sections on Central Park.
Roughly a week earlier, Mitchell had demanded the woman's camera after she used it to document his lewd behavior, she told police. On the day of the attack, he approached her asking whether she recognized him; she did but denied it, the District Attorney's office said.
After fleeing the park, Mitchell groped two other women on the nearby Upper West Side, prosecutors said. He was charged with pulling a knife on a man and threatening to stab him during an August 2012 argument in the park.
He also pleaded to a weapon-possession charge concerning the August 2012 incident involving a man in Strawberry Fields. And, although he didn't have to admit specifically to the gropings after the bird-watcher rape, his plea resolves those charges as well.
Mitchell comes from tiny Jenkinjones, W.Va. – an struggling unincorporated coal town of fewer than 300 people – where his felony arrest record began in his teens. It grew so ominous that when he was released from a Virginia prison in 2011, some of his neighbors bought guns to protect themselves.
At 18, he was charged with raping and killing an 86-year-old woman in Jenkinjones.
A few months after being acquitted in that case, he was charged with raping a woman in her 70s and stealing her gun. That sexual assault charge was dropped in a plea bargain, his then-attorney said.
After serving time in that case -- a prison term punctuated by a conviction for escaping -- Mitchell was released, then imprisoned again for a time on a grand larceny charge, according to West Virginia prison officials.
Released in 2001, he came under suspicion about a year later in the death of a 54-year-old Jenkinjones woman, but he was never charged.
Mitchell went to prison in Virginia in 2003 in the abduction of his ex-girlfriend. Released after serving about eight years, he was soon locked up on probation violations, then got out again and dropped out of sight.
After his New York arrest and a report of an unrelated rape in another New York park weeks later, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other local officials called for new measures to toughen sentences for sex offenders and make it easier to prosecute them.
And Mayor Michael Bloomberg found himself emphasizing that Central Park, the site of an infamous 1989 rape, has become safer in recent years.
On April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old investment banker was found after being sexually attacked while running in the park. She was in a coma for 12 days. Known worldwide for years only as "the Central Park jogger," Trisha Meili disclosed her identity in 2003 and published a memoir.
Check Out These Other Stories From CBSNewYork.com:
(TM and © Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
