Anchorage Police have arrested and charged 25-year-old Tony Earl Bullock Jr. for 2 sexual assaults and 1 attempted sexual assault and assault with a weapon. Police allege he is a serial rapist who abducted and women at gunpoint.
John Vandervalk is a detective with the Anchorage Police Department Special Victims Unit. He says Tony Earl Bullock Jr. allegedly targeted brunette women with similar features.
“It appears generally what he targeted was thin-build, brunette females in the 18- to 35-year-old group,” Vandervalk said. “Two were Native; one was a white female, but they all have similar features.”
Vandervalk says Bullock has been in the Army for about two and half years and is stationed at Fort Richardson.
The first alleged sexual assault occurred at approximately 4:20 a.m. on July 16. The very next day police say Bullock abducted another young woman around 6:30 p.m. on Bragaw Street.
The victims in these two events completed composite drawings that were extremely similar. They were released to the public and multiple tips were received. July 20 was a turning point in the case, Vandervalk says. That’s when a patrol officer noticed a person matching the description in the cases following a lone female on foot, at around 3:00 a.m. in the Mountain View neighborhood. The officer identified him as Bullock.
“That one was probably a sexual assault that was narrowly averted by a sharp patrol officer who noticed him following a female in a suspicious manner in the middle of the night and took action and interrupted the event before it occurred,” Vandervalk said.
That’s when Bullock became a person of interest in the case. Then on Aug. 11 at approximately 4:30 a.m. a Native female called 911 and reported that a black male had just attempted to rape her.
“In the last event that was only an attempt the victim was able to retain her cell phone and immediately report to APD,” Vandervalk said.
She provided a vehicle license plate number for the vehicle the suspect drove away in, and vehicle was Bullock’s. She was also able to positively ID him. He denied assaulting the woman but admitted to meeting her on the streets of Mountain View.
On Tuesday APD served multiple search warrants on locations that Bullock used as residences, including his Barracks room on Fort Richardson, and recovered more evidence. The APD partnered with the U.S. Army in their investigation. The suspect was apprehended, investigators emphasize, because of the bravery of the victims.
“All three of those women immediately reported the events right after the event,” Vandervalk said. “This enabled the police to secure the crime scene and recover the critical evidence that is there.”
Vandervalk says investigators believe there may be additional victims.
“Four events that APD can be certain that he was involved with over about a three and half week period leads me to believe, as an investigator, that he may be involved in other events,” he said.
According to a spokesman for U.S. Army Alaska, Bullock had been a specialist assigned to the second engineer brigade at Fort Richardson since March of 2012. His specialty is repairing small fire arms. That was his first main duty assignment.
He joined the Army in February 2011.
The APD is asking anyone who may have been assaulted by Bullock to report it to police. Bullock was scheduled to be arraigned at the Anchorage Jail Wednesday afternoon.
Daysha Eaton is a contributor with the Alaska Public Radio Network.
Daysha Eaton holds a B.A. from Evergreen State College, and a M.A. from the University of Southern California. Daysha got her start in radio at Seattle public radio stations, KPLU and KUOW. Before coming to KBBI, she was the News Director at KYUK in Bethel. She has also worked as the Southcentral Reporter for KSKA in Anchorage.
Daysha's work has appeared on NPR's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered", PRI's "The World" and "National Native News". She's happy to take assignments, and to get news tips, which are best sent via email.
Daysha became a journalist because she believes in the power of storytelling. Stories connect us and they help us make sense of our world. They shed light on injustice and they comfort us in troubled times. She got into public broadcasting because it seems to fulfill the intention of the 4th Estate and to most effectively apply the freedom of the press granted to us through the Constitution. She feels that public radio has a special way of moving people emotionally through sound, taking them to remote places, introducing them to people they would not otherwise meet and compelling them to think about issues they might ordinarily overlook.
