Woman relieved over serial-rape arrest

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) - A Colorado man accused of trying to blow up a police officer's home in Pueblo has been charged with 11 rapes that occurred in Albuquerque from 1991 into 2000.

DNA tests only link Robert Bruce, 47, of Pueblo, Colo., to five of the Albuquerque assaults, according to investigators who say they will use motive in pursuing convictions in the other six cases.

Bruce was arrested Oct. 6 after a Pueblo police officer found a propane tank rigged to pump the gas into his home. The officer had been scheduled to testify against Bruce in a trial.

He is charged with two counts of attempted murder and is being held on a $3 million bond.

The serial rapist who targeted women in the University of New Mexico area became known as "Ether Man" because his victims passed out after he put a chemically-soaked rag over their mouths.

Bruce's arrest brought a sense of relief to at least one woman who said she encountered the Ether Man almost a decade ago.

"I walked up to my window, and there was a man standing outside my window," Mandra Ryan told KRQE News 13 in 2001.

Ryan, a UNM student at the time, said she yelled and scared off the man.

Now Ryan is getting a good look at what may be the face she said haunted her for nearly 10 years.

"It's very alarming," she said. "Here we are in 2009, and he's finally getting caught.

"I'm glad he finally slipped up and they've been able to link everything together."

Colorado police took a DNA sample from Bruce after his arrest there, and that matched DNA recovered in five of the Albuquerque cases.

The victims all lived near UNM and many of them worked in the medical field. All were fit and worked out, police said.

After Ether Man disappeared from Albuquerque he may have turned up in Austin, Texas, where he is suspected in the 2006 rape of a University of Texas student. That woman also said she was knocked out before being attacked.

"He had some kind of food vending business that he would pedal the university, so he was going from university to university, all over the southwest," said Scott Stanfield of the Austin Police Department.

Bruce's job allowed him to travel in Europe and Asia, Stanfield said. "So there is no telling how many additional cases this guy has done," he added.

Police in Fort Collins, Colo., and Lubbock, Texas, are looking at Bruce as a possible suspect in assaults there.

Bruce's criminal history in New Mexico includes domestic violence charges and several traffic citations.

Police in Lubbock, Texas said today they're also looking into whether Bruce could be linked to sexual assault cases there.

"It was kind of alarming that this was still happening some where else," Ryan said. "So it was a huge relief that this is going to happen no longer."

Albuquerque police said they think they know how Bruce chose his victims and stalked them, but they're not ready to release those details yet.