Dennis Rabbitt: The South Side Rapist of St. Louis

Dennis Rabbitt, known as the South Side Rapist, was a St. Louis man who sexually assaulted women across the region for roughly 25 years before DNA evidence identified him in late 1998. By his own admission, he raped more than 100 women and attempted to attack hundreds more, beginning as a teenager in the early 1970s. In January 2000 he pleaded guilty to 49 counts of rape, sodomy, and robbery and received six consecutive life sentences across three Missouri counties. He will not be eligible for parole until age 119.¹²

Rabbitt grew up on the south side of St. Louis, living above his father’s tavern on Macklind Avenue, a bar frequented by neighborhood police officers. His father twice ran for state representative. Rabbitt graduated from DuBourg High School in 1975, married in 1980, and had two children. He ran a bar, worked in construction, and played softball. His wife left him in 1989.¹

How He Operated

Rabbitt began raping women when he was 16 or 17. His method stayed consistent for decades. He prowled south St. Louis neighborhoods at night looking for unlocked doors and windows, then slipped into homes while residents slept, sometimes while a husband lay in bed next to the victim. He wore masks and gloves to avoid fingerprints and forced victims to shower afterward to destroy DNA evidence.²

His victims ranged in age from 14 to 82. On some nights he entered three or four homes in a single outing. He later said he would read victims’ mail and listen to their phone messages while inside their houses, and sometimes watched them sleep before leaving.²

A cluster of assaults in 1992 drew heavy press coverage, and the local media gave him the nickname South Side Rapist. He first learned of it when an elderly landlady showed him a copy of the South Side Journal and asked whether he had heard about the serial attacker. The street names in the article were his own hunting grounds.¹

His crimes were not confined to the city. Investigators linked him to assaults in St. Charles County and Jefferson County in Missouri, in Collinsville, Illinois, and in Henderson, Nevada, where a string of rapes between December 1991 and September 1992 was later connected to him.²

Why He Eluded Police for So Long

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department’s Sex Crimes and Family Violence Unit ran the investigation and fielded roughly 2,000 tips over the course of the case. None of them pointed to Rabbitt.¹

Several factors protected him. He changed his appearance often, which made composite sketches unreliable. His crimes crossed jurisdictions whose records were not computerized or linked. During attacks he used language that suggested he knew police procedure, and at one point he claimed to monitor police radio channels. That claim sent investigators down a dead end, prompting them to collect DNA samples from their own officers.¹

A geographic profiler eventually reframed the investigation. Noting that predators of this kind fail roughly 70 percent of the time, the profiler urged police to stop searching only for a sex offender and start looking for a nighttime burglar. Rabbitt’s failed break-ins far outnumbered his completed assaults, and the shift opened new leads.¹

How He Was Caught

In September 1998, a man named Eugene Frigo spotted a suspicious figure on his porch in Pacific, Missouri. Frigo chased him, watched him flee in a van, and gave police the license plate number. The plates turned out to be stolen. Detective Randy Sasenger used records from the U.S. Postal Inspector’s office to trace them to a residence in Cedar Hills.²

On October 29, 1998, Sasenger confronted Rabbitt there, took him into custody, and obtained fingerprints and a saliva swab. DNA analysis at the time took about four weeks, and without a confirmed match the police had to release him.³

The lab came back faster than expected. On October 31, 1998, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department’s crime lab confirmed the match. Police Chief Ronald Henderson later called it a “100 percent match,” with a probability of one in 5.5 billion that the South Side Rapist was anyone else.³ By the time police had an arrest warrant, Rabbitt was gone. He left the St. Louis area on November 3, 1998, and spent four months as a fugitive.²

He surfaced at a motel in Albuquerque, New Mexico, living under a false name. On February 28, 1999, Albuquerque police went to the motel looking for a 15-year-old runaway girl and found her with Rabbitt. Officers identified him and turned him over to federal authorities, and St. Louis detectives brought him back to Missouri.⁴²

The Teenager Who Fought Him Off

In November 1991, Rabbitt broke into the home of 14-year-old Tammy Sorocko, the daughter of a St. Louis police detective. Sorocko fought back using techniques her father had taught her. The two bit, scratched, and punched each other, and she managed to grab the knife he had brought and break the blade. The ferocity of her resistance drove him out of the house.²

Years later, from prison, Rabbitt called her a “very strong young lady” who “should be very proud.” Sorocko attended his sentencing and said the hearing gave her a measure of closure.²

Guilty Plea and Six Life Sentences

Rabbitt first pleaded not guilty to the St. Louis County charges in the summer of 1999, then changed course. In January 2000 he pleaded guilty to 49 counts of rape, sodomy, and robbery. He confessed to nearly all of the crimes attributed to him. He has contested one case, a daytime rape at a High Ridge shopping center, insisting he “would never do a daylight on a parking lot.”¹

St. Louis County Circuit Court Judge Bernhardt “Buzz” Drumm Jr. imposed three consecutive life sentences. Rabbitt received two more life terms in St. Charles County and a sixth in Jefferson County, all to run consecutively. He apologized to his victims at the hearing, with several survivors in the courtroom.²

He is incarcerated at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking, Missouri. Parole eligibility would not arrive until he was 119.¹²

What He Has Said From Prison

In early 2001, Rabbitt wrote two letters to FOX 2 reporter Mandy Murphey and agreed to an on-camera interview at the Crossroads Correctional Center. He said he wanted people to understand how he operated so they could protect themselves from predators like him.²

He described a double life: family man, bar owner, and construction worker by day, predator by night. He traced the behavior to childhood voyeurism and said it escalated until he felt unable to stop. “I would bury it inside of me,” he said, “to the point where I was like a walking dead man; just going through the motions.” He also told an interviewer, “I don’t hate women; I love women.”²⁵

Rabbitt said he had found religion and forgiveness in prison. Reporters and professionals who spoke with him described his delivery as scripted and matter-of-fact. Forensic psychologist Dr. Richard Scott assessed that Rabbitt had an intellectual grasp of remorse but did not emotionally identify with it, and he described a narcissism that remained at a “primitive level of development.”¹

1
St. Louis Magazine. Chasing Rabbitt
2
FOX 2 Now. How Police Caught the South Side Rapist Responsible for Two Decades of Terror in St. Louis
3
Las Vegas Sun. St. Louis Police Confirm Former LV Resident Is Suspect
4
Los Angeles Times. South Side Rapist Arrested in Albuquerque
5
Los Angeles Times. Cold Case Files Premiere