The homeless man arrested for allegedly raping a woman in a bar bathroom stall in Manhattan has professed his innocence. Rodney Stover told the Post in a jailhouse interview that he wouldn't need to rape anyone because "I’m not a bad-looking guy. I can get girls."
Police say that Stover, 48, grabbed a 23-year-old customer who was in the downstairs bathroom, at the Turnmill Bar on East 27th Street on April 10th, and raped her. The authorities released surveillance footage of the suspect, and one of the bar owners spotted Stover walking on the street—"He looked the same, but he had gotten a haircut"—and alerted authorities.
Stover had been living at a Department of Homeless Services intake center at Bellevue on East 30th Street when he was arrested, because he was released from prison in February, after serving a 20-year prison sentence for a 1993 rape. But he told the Post he wasn't at Turnmill Bar: "If I would have been there, I would have killed the guy... Well, I would have pulled him off."
The Post has reported that even though Stover is a registered sex offender, he and other sex offenders are living near schools: "City Hall cited a giant loophole in the law, which prohibits Level 3 offenders — the most violent — from living within 1,000 feet of a school. The residency requirement is waived for those not on parole or probation." Stover has also been working at the Empire State Building, ripping tickets at the family tourist attraction SkyRide.
A former in-law told the Post they wanted Stover kept behind bars, "We all were fearful something else would happen, and it did. “My heart goes out to the victim. Some people cannot be rehabilitated, and he is one of them."
