"In numerous phone interviews beginning in April, Thomas initially told The Post, in hushed tones, that Erwin was responsible for the crimes."

"He said that 'Erwin would show up' and things would happen in the middle of the night, and that 'he only comes around when I’m lonely.'"

Isn't it interesting that The Washington Post drops its long, sympathetic article about a rapist after the election is over? Rape (strangely) became a huge issue in the past campaign season, and it dramatically hurt the Republican Party to have 2 senatorial candidates that said something stupid related to rape (both inept efforts at pro-life sentiment).

And now here's this big WaPo article about a man who committed many rapes — "more than a dozen rapes by his count, although police think there were probably many more."

The man was arrested in March 2011, so it's not as if this is late-breaking material. This is an elaborately worked-out invitation into the mind of the rapist that expects us to care about his struggle to understand himself. "It’s awful. It’s scary. . . . I don’t know why I couldn’t just stop." And: "I understand I need to be punished... Now tell me what the hell is wrong with me."

ADDED: Robert Stacy McCain takes a different perspective on the article:

To me, it relates to the “broken windows” theory of crime prevention: The petty criminal — the burglar, the thief, the minor dope dealer — is potentially capable of serious crime. The defiant anti-social personality who finds himself able to get away with petty crime will tend to develop an arrogant contempt for the law, which leads to the pattern of escalating [recidivism]. Thus, more stringent enforcement of laws against relatively minor offenses will ultimately tend to reduce the number of serious offenses.