A man in Denver has been charged with raping four women after offering them rides home from bars, dating back nearly two years — and police believe there could be additional victims.
Byron L. Whitehorn, 50, has been charged with sexually assaulting four women as they exited bars in the city’s LoDo section by offering them rides home. Once inside his 2005 Audi A4 sedan, Whitehorn would rape the women before dropping them off at their homes, the Denver District Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday.
Police in Denver said DNA evidence collected from the most recent assault on Dec. 14 was later determined to match the attacker in three earlier sex assault cases, including one that occurred on April 9, 2017.
The most recent attack took place on Dec. 14, when Whitehorn allegedly picked up a woman who had gone to The Ginn Bar on Larimer Street. She told police she had called Uber for a ride and was walking outside when a man approached her and offered her a ride home. The man grabbed her cellphone and canceled the Uber ride, according to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by the Denver Post.
The woman later awoke while inside a man’s car as she was being raped. She told police that the attack was an “out of body experience,” according to the affidavit.
The attacker then took the woman to her apartment in Lakewood, where he again grabbed her phone and recorded his first name as “Byron” before entering his phone number and telling the victim, “Let’s do this again.”
The victim called police and went to a hospital for a rape examination. Investigators were able to determine that the DNA of the woman’s attacker matched that of a suspect who had previously raped three women after picking them up outside bars in the LoDo neighborhood.
The four victims provided investigators with similar details of their attacker, saying that a man had approached them while they were highly intoxicated either inside or near bars in the area. They told police they later awoke as they were being sexually assaulted, the affidavit states.
Whitehorn denied raping anyone when a detective called him using a phone number he allegedly entered into the phone of the fourth victim. He claimed not knowing the woman and told police he regularly went to LoDo with friends to meet women, according to the affidavit.
A composite sketch based on a description provided by Whitehorn’s alleged fourth victim closely resembled photos from his Facebook profile. Two of the earlier rape victims also told investigators that their attacker drove a white sedan, while a third reported that the vehicle has tan cloth seats, the same color and material as Whitehorn’s 2005 Audi, police said.
A warrant was obtained for Whitehorn’s DNA and the genetic material matched the suspect in each of the rapes, according to the affidavit.
Whitehorn remained in custody as of Wednesday on $500,000 bond, jail records show. His preliminary hearing has been scheduled for Feb. 26.
Anyone who believes that they may have been victimized by Whitehorn is asked to call Denver police at (720) 913-2000.
Whitehorn’s Facebook profile, meanwhile, had been largely scrubbed as of Wednesday, showing just one photo from 2012. But the profile did include three quotes, one of which referenced the inherent, varying qualities of all people.
“There is so much bad in the best of us, and so much good in the worst of us, that it little behooves any of us to judge the rest,” the quote read.