Editor’s Note: This story contains discussions of rape or sexual assault that may be disturbing. Reader discretion is advised. If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can find help and discreet resources on the National Sexual Assault Hotline website or by calling 1-800-656-4673.
QUEENS, N.Y. (PIX11) — A Georgia man is accused of raping five women, including two at the same time, during a string of violent home invasions in Queens during the 1990s, according to authorities.
Michael Benjamin, 57, was arrested on Thursday and charged with rape after fingerprint and DNA evidence linked him to incidents spanning from 1995 to 1997, according to the NYPD.
“These were heinous, heinous, heinous rapes that occurred,” a police source said. “He’s coming into people’s homes in the middle of the night and raping women.”
On July 24, 1995, at around 5 a.m., Benjamin allegedly broke into a 24-year-old woman’s home near 113th Road and 194th Street, pulled a sheet over her head, and tied her up, prosecutors and police said. The suspect was accused of raping her and stealing her cash and jewelry before fleeing the scene.
About a year later, the suspect was accused of putting a jacket over a 27-year-old woman’s head and raping her in her home near 140th Avenue and South Conduit Avenue on Aug. 24, 1996, authorities said.
The third victim was attacked about a month later.
Benjamin allegedly followed the 21-year-old woman to her front door and forced her inside the home on 131st Avenue at gunpoint on Sept. 15, 1996, according to police and prosecutors. The defendant threatened to kill her husband and child before allegedly raping her.
In February 1997, Benjamin allegedly attacked two women, ages 21 and 33, at the same time in their home near 241st Street and 136th Avenue, cops said. Police said both victims were raped, and the suspect fled with cash and jewelry.
“I didn’t do it. I didn’t f—– do it,” Benjamin repeatedly screamed as he was walked out of the Bronx Special Victims command on Thursday afternoon.
Benjamin was indicted as a “John Doe” on the charges in 2005, which stopped the clock on the statute of limitations, authorities said. The suspect was tied to the crimes after his DNA from a cup at the Rockdale County Sheriff’s office in Georgia matched the victims’ DNA, prosecutors said.
Benjamin was apprehended in Georgia on Sept. 22 and extradited to New York City on Wednesday. He was arraigned on Thursday on charges of rape, sodomy, sexual assault, and robbery.
“He vigorously denies the allegations,” defense attorney Joseph Amsel said.
Benjamin has a violent string of prior arrests, including an alleged rape of a minor in Queens in 1991 and an armed robbery in 1994, also in Queens, according to the NYPD.
“Although decades have passed, these cold cases were not forgotten,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said.