King County prosecutors last week charged a 66-year-old Skyway man with attempted first-degree rape, accusing the Level 3 sex offender of stalking and trying to rape a Renton woman in her apartment earlier this month.
Garry Eastabrook was serving sentences for two extortion convictions when he escaped from the prison previously known as the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe in June 1983; he was on the lam until his arrest in October 1987. The following year, he was convicted of first-degree rape for a raping a woman at knifepoint in Thurston County, according to King County prosecutors and a spokesperson with the state Department of Corrections (DOC).
Eastabrook spent 32 years in prison on the rape charge before he was released June 8, the DOC spokesperson said.
Eastabrook is accused of, on Sept. 1, following a 35-year-old woman from a Renton pawn shop to a nearby casino, where he offered her a $2,000 loan and then followed her back to her apartment under the pretense of completing loan paperwork, say the criminal charges filed Friday.
Prosecutors say that Eastabrook grabbed a paring knife from the woman's kitchen and demanded she remove her clothes, but fled after hearing voices in the hallway outside her unit.
"The defendant appears to have engaged in numerous acts of violence, extortion and sexual assault since the late 1970s," Senior Deputy Prosecutor Celia Lee wrote in the charges, noting the facts of the 1987 rape of a stranger in her apartment are "alarmingly similar" to the attempted rape of the Renton woman.
Sex offenders in Washington are categorized as Level 1, 2, or 3, with Level 3 sex offenders considered at highest risk to commit additional sex crimes. According to the King County Sheriff's website, which includes a searchable sex-offender registry, Level 3 sex offenders may not know their victims, often deny or minimize their crimes, and often have clear signs of a personality disorder.
Should he be convicted of attempted first-degree rape, Eastabrook faces a potential life sentence as a persistent offender, Lee wrote.
It was not yet clear Monday whether Eastabrook was represented by an attorney.
According to the charges:
Based on the woman's account to police and video-surveillance footage from the pawn shop and casino, the woman pawned an iPad at Cash America in Renton a little before 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 1. A car registered to Eastabrook pulled into the parking lot a minute after the woman parked and a man followed her into the business.
After talking to a clerk about a baby monitor, the man walked around the parking lot for several minutes before slowly driving away 30 seconds before the woman drove off. The charges say the video didn't show any contact between the man and woman.
She arrived at the Fortune Casino about 10 minutes later and Eastabrook's car was seen directly behind her vehicle, the charges say. The woman ordered a meal in the casino restaurant and was approached by a man, who was seen writing something on a paper napkin. The woman later told police she was having financial problems and the man who approached her said he had seen her at the pawn shop and offered her a $2,000 loan. After giving the man her phone number, the woman ate lunch and then met him in the parking lot, where he followed her back to her apartment.
Once there, the man asked for her driver's license for the loan paperwork, asked if anyone else was in the apartment, and when she answered no, he abruptly got off the couch and walked into a bedroom. Confused, the woman followed him and the man shut the door and demanded she remove her clothes. The woman refused and told the man she no longer wanted to borrow money, the charges say.
The "male appeared to change his mind," enabling the woman to run out of the bedroom to the front door, but before she could open it, the man grabbed a knife off the counter and pinned her in the corner, strangling her and ordering her to return to the bedroom and undress, the charges say.
Then, the sounds of people in the hallway apparently scared the man, who wiped the knife with his shirt and hurried out the door, according to the charges.
The woman called her boyfriend, who called 911. As the man was leaving, the woman photographed his car from a window and the vehicle's license plate led police to Eastabrook, who rents a room at a Skyway boarding house for sex offenders, the charges say.
When police searched Eastabrook's room on Sept. 9, they found the woman's name handwritten in a notebook along with a napkin with her phone number and address written on it, according to charging papers. Officers also found the shirt Eastabrook was seen wearing in the video-surveillance footage.
Eastabrook, who remains jailed in lieu of $2 million bail, is to be arraigned Sept. 24.
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