Nov. 21--Eugene Booker, dubbed the "dreadlock rapist" by police for a string of sexual assaults, was adamant when detectives approached him in prison recently about a 1981 murder case.
Booker said he didn't know the victim, Carol Novak, had never been to the 35-year-old's home in Edgewater and wasn't even familiar with that area of the North Side. But then detectives confronted him with DNA evidence they said linked him to the death of Novak, who had been stabbed more than 50 times.
"You can't fight DNA," Booker finally told the detectives, according to a prosecution filing.
"Could you let the surviving remaining family members (know) ... I'm sorry about what happened to her?" he added, according to prosecutors. "I'm definitely sorry about what happened to her."
Booker, 59, was charged this week with killing Novak in her apartment in the 5800 block of North Paulina Street in October 1981, officials said.
He was denied bail during a hearing Friday. Booker is less than halfway through an 80-year prison sentence for six sexual assaults from the 1980s.
Novak's partially clothed body was found in her living room about 6:15 a.m. Oct. 2, 1981, with stab wounds to the back, right side, neck and right eye. Her dog was also stabbed in the head, according to officials. Detectives noted trails of blood from her bedroom throughout the rest of the apartment, according to court filings.
Detectives interviewed several witnesses, but the case went cold, according to the filings.
Police reopened the case last year and sent evidence collected at the scene, including a rape kit, to a lab. The DNA profile that came back matched Booker, whose DNA was already on file in the system because of his conviction in the six other sexual assaults, according to court documents.
According to prosecutors, Booker selected several of his victims after seeing them on public transit. Booker followed them to their apartment buildings and attacked them as they entered their homes, prosecutors said.
On Jan. 8, 1987, a woman told police that a man fitting Booker's description had followed her to her apartment building in the 400 block of West Fullerton Parkway. Booker was arrested near the scene and identified by several other women.
He was convicted on six counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault and sentenced to 80 years.
