Ex-wife: Rape suspect led double life

PUEBLO, Colo. (KRQE) - The ex-wife of Robert Bruce, suspected of being the serial rapist known as "Ether Man," began to sense something was going on when the couple was still married and living in Albuquerque.

"He was living a double life," Rosa Bruce said.

Rosa and Robert Bruce lived together in Albuquerque from 1988 to 2000. Beginning in 1991 and over the next nine years a total of 11 Albuquerque women were raped by a man dubbed Ether Man because he used a rag soaked in some type of chemical to render his victims unconscious.

Police citing matches in DNA evidence have charged Bruce in the rapes.

Rosa Bruce now says it was because she was suspicious of her husband that she left him and moved to Pueblo, Colo., in 2000.

However her husband followed her to Colorado to be near the kids. That same year the trail of Ether Man went cold in Albuquerque.

Last month Robert Bruce was arrested in Pueblo for trying to blow up a police officer's home. Police took Bruce's DNA, and that led to the alleged match with Ether Man.

Rosa Bruce said before his arrest Robert Bruce continued his double life. He would attend his kids' school activities and pay child support when he could.

But now that he's been arrested she doesn't know where to turn.

"We're going to be financially devastated because he paid child support," Rosa Bruce said. "I don't know where to go from here."

She also said her kids are struggling with the idea that they may not have truly known their own father.