A Florida trucker who was sentenced this week to 30 years in prison for abducting and sexually assaulting a Connecticut woman is the suspect in a 2005 rape near Arundel Mills mall, Anne Arundel County police said yesterday.
DNA collected from Thomas Hooks, 51, of Pensacola, matches evidence collected from the cold case in Hanover, when a 24-year-old woman said she was attacked by a man who hid in the back of her van while she used a gas station restroom, said Cpl. Sara Schriver, a police spokeswoman.
"We have started a thorough investigation," Schriver said, "and once we're through with that, depending on what is revealed, charges will be applied."
On Tuesday, Gov. Martin O'Malley said he wants police departments to collect genetic samples from anyone arrested in a violent crime, the same day that Baltimore County police announced they had used DNA evidence to make a second arrest in a 30-year-old rape case. It was among the department's 19 arrests since 2004, when officers began using a DNA database to solve cold cases. Anne Arundel authorities have solved five such cases, Schriver said.
Through the use of DNA databases, Connecticut officials are working with authorities along the East Coast to determine whether Hooks is connected to other unsolved crimes.
He pleaded no contest in April to charges of first-degree kidnapping and aggravated first-degree sexual assault in the February 2006 Connecticut incident. He was accused of waving the victim down on a highway exit ramp in Ashford, then blindfolding and raping her in the truck's sleeper cab. He was sentenced Tuesday in Connecticut Superior Court.
Three months before that crime, according to Anne Arundel County police, Hooks emerged from the back seat of his victim's van, took control of the vehicle and drove into a nearby wooded area, where he forced her to have sex with him.
Hooks previously served less than half of a 27-year sentence for an attack in which he rammed a woman's vehicle off the road with his 18-wheeler, forced her into the truck at gunpoint and raped her twice. He was released in 2000.
Justin.fenton@baltsun.com
The Associated Press contributed to this article.