Woman recalls escape from Fairmount Park attacker: ‘I just felt his evil’ | 2004

Even when she knows that there’s no one else in the house, that all the doors and windows are tightly sealed, Lisa keeps looking behind her and double-checking the locks.

It’s been a little more than three months since she was attacked while jogging in Fairmount Park, when the man who police say murdered one woman and raped another grabbed her from behind, ripped off parts of her clothes, and stabbed her seven times as she fought back.

Lisa’s physical wounds are steadily healing, although she may lose her right thumb, deeply sliced when she grabbed the knife thrust in her stomach.

Her emotional wounds are coming along more slowly. According to Lisa’s doctors, she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

She is afraid to be alone, afraid to jog outside, and, above all, afraid her attacker is getting ready to hurt someone else.

The Oct. 25 attack along West River Drive came three months after medical student Rebecca Park, 30, was found raped and strangled in Fairmount Park. Park was killed almost three months after another female jogger was raped near Kelly and Fountain Green Drives. Police, who have released a composite sketch, say the same man committed the attacks.

“He’s still out there, and I still see people running alone,” said Lisa, 37, whose last name is being withheld. “He’s out there, and people need to keep their eyes open. We are a community, and we have to work like a community. If someone suspects someone they know, they have to tell police.”

Philadelphia police said they had no new leads in the investigation.

But as a result of initial police bungling of Lisa’s attack — it took more than two hours for officers to arrive at Lankenau Hospital to interview her because different districts argued over which should handle the complaint — Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said yesterday he issued a new policy on how to handle a situation when district boundaries are in dispute.

He also said the officers involved in the bickering and subsequent delay might face formal disciplinary charges, with penalties ranging from training and counseling to suspensions of up to 20 days. He did not release their names but said a number were supervisors.

Lisa, who has spoken with Johnson about the policy changes, said she was happy her attack had some positive effects.

But for now, she’s just dealing with the negative ones.

On the evening of Oct. 25, Lisa thought she was being careful when she took her run about 6 p.m. West River Drive was open for traffic, she reasoned, and plenty of people were around. She had seen the attacker’s composite sketch many times along her route.

Near the end of her five-mile run on a path that parallels West River Drive, she saw a man on a small purple bicycle ride past. She noticed him, she said, because he was wearing a dark workout suit that seemed too heavy for the still-warm weather.

She caught a quick glimpse of his face and “for a second, it went through my mind that he looked like the Fairmount Park rapist and murderer,” she said.

She pushed the thought away and kept running. A couple walked toward her. She smiled in acknowledgment and kept going. She was near the Route 1 overpass when she realized someone was behind her.

Her attacker wrapped his arms around her chest, pressing a knife against her face, and said the only words he would utter during the five-minute struggle: “Come with me and don’t say a word.”

“He was very calm, and as soon as he touched me, I just felt his evil,” she said.

He pulled her off the path and into a wooded area toward the stream below. She elbowed him in the stomach and managed to turn around.

That’s when she saw his face.

“I knew right away, no question, without a doubt, that this was the Fairmount Park rapist and murderer,” she said. “It helped my fight. I just kept saying to him the whole time, ‘Stop. You’re not going to do this to me.’

“I didn’t think for a minute he’d be successful. I thought, ‘He’s not going to do this to me. My family is not going to go through what Rebecca’s is going through.’ "

They struggled. He ripped off part of her shirt and kept grabbing at her pants. His knife sliced open her chin and punctured her neck and chest. She said she never felt the pain, only the warm blood.

Somehow, their fight took them down to the stream and back up near the jogging path. The attacker “was maniacally enraged. The look on his face was one I’d never seen before,” Lisa said. “That’s when he went from trying to rape me to trying to kill me.”

He thrust wildly with his knife. One jab went into her stomach. She grabbed the knife and pulled it out.

“If I lose my thumb . . . it’s such a small thing compared to what could have been,” she said.

Then, the attacker ran. Lisa said she believes that he heard cars coming down West River Drive. She ran into the middle of the street. Two cars drove around her. The third stopped and took her to the hospital.

“I’m sure I scared them to death, half-naked and covered with blood,” she said of the drivers who passed her by.

Since the attack, Lisa has given up her house in the city and is now living with family more than an hour’s drive from her Philadelphia doctors. She has taken a short-term disability leave from her marketing job. Naturally right-handed, she is learning to write with her left hand.

She talks about how lucky she was: that she found the strength to fight back; that their struggle brought them close to the street; that he was scared off; that the couple who stopped to help her were a doctor and his wife who knew exactly where to go and what to do.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I think maybe Rebecca was there helping me.”