Scary/Horror Stories.

The East Coast Rapist

On the night of October 31, 2009, three teenage girls were hauling bags of candy through a quiet suburb in Woodbridge, Virginia. Just north of them, in Arlington County, a man named Aaron Thomas was climbing into a yellow Chrysler 300 sedan. In his pocket was a cigarette lighter shaped like a 9-mm semiautomatic.

Thomas had once lived in Woodbridge. He'd shared a small fixer-upper with a woman named Jewell Hicks and her young son, whom he raised as his own. The relationship didn't work out, but they'd remained friends. In fact, Hicks was the reason Thomas was in town that Halloween—he was helping her move out, and it was her car he was driving. Thomas set out that night to buy a new shirt, but he soon found himself cruising by their old house, lost in the memories.

He spotted the three teenage girls trick-or-treating. It was raining. It was getting dark. The girls were alone. Thomas parked the car. Before the girls knew what was happening, Thomas was pointing the fake gun at them and forcing them into a wooded backlot behind a CVS pharmacy, where a steep slope took them to the bottom of a rain-drenched ravine. Thomas ordered the girls to line up and lie down.

One of the girls later said, "I was praying. I thought that was it. I thought I was going to die." Another girl managed to send a to her mother: "Man raping my friend in the woods behind CVS call 911." Then she dialed 911 herself. Thomas was too busy to notice. Police converged on the site within minutes, sending Thomas fleeing into the woods. He tossed the lighter away, doubled back in a wide circle, and then calmly walked past dozens of police officer to his car in the CVS parking lot and .

From 1997 to 2009, families in New England had a reason to lock their doors at night, although they didn't know it. For those 12 years, Aaron Thomas, soon to be dubbed the "East Coast Rapist," had been abducting and raping women from Virginia to Rhode Island. The Halloween abduction sparked a massive manhunt, but it still took two more years and an anonymous tip before police tracked Thomas down. They were able to link his DNA to 13 unsolved rape cases, although he's admitted to raping many more than that. In 2013, Aaron Thomas received three life terms plus 80 years, and in 2015 he pleaded guilty to three more charges and received .