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'Hyde Park rapist' back in Hillsborough jail

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By JOSH POLTILOVE | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 1, 2009

Updated: 07/01/2009 03:34 pm

Less than a week after being arrested on probation violation charges, the man known as the "Hyde Park rapist" is back in Hillsborough County.

Bobby Joe Helms has been sent from Bevard County Jail to Orient Road Jail. He was booked into the jail about 11 a.m. today.

He will be held in administrative confinement – by himself in an area where deputies will come by to check on him every so often, Hillsborough County sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said.

Helms, known in the 1980s as the "Hyde Park rapist," was arrested Friday evening by the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. Investigators say they believe Helms lied to a probation officer about associating with a teenage girl and may be involved with illegal drugs in violation of his probation.

Several victims of the "Hyde Park rapist" have a meeting scheduled next week with the State Attorney's Office, one of the victims said this week.

In an interview with the Tribune, one victim said the State Attorney's Office asked for the victims to attend a July 8 meeting. The victim said she hopes she will get a chance to speak about Helms and that the victims ultimately might have a chance to tell a judge about their rapes.

Assistant State Attorney Pam Bondi said her office would not comment on internal meetings.

The victim said she hopes investigators are able to return Helms to prison and keep him behind bars for a long time.

Helms' attorney, Jeanine Cohen, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Helms was arrested about 9:30 p.m. Friday while driving not far from the efficiency apartment where he lives on North Harbor City Boulevard in Melbourne, investigators say.

At the time of his arrest, Helms, 52, was in the company of a teenage girl and had more than 100 tablets of a prescription painkiller on him, the sheriff's office said.

Helms has lived in Melbourne for 18 months. He moved there after his release from the Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia, where he was under psychiatric treatment provided to sex offenders. Helms spent eight years at the Arcadia facility. Psychiatrists deemed him no threat in early 2008.

He sought to live in Brevard County upon his release.

Helms terrorized residents of South Tampa in the 1980s, breaking into homes while the occupants were sleeping. Helms told police in a negotiated plea that he committed 12 Tampa burglary-rapes from 1982 to 1984. As part of the deal, Helms pleaded guilty to one of the attacks. He also confessed to four attempted rapes, police said.

Police and prosecutors negotiated a plea agreement rather than go to trial because of a lack of strong physical evidence or witness identifications in all but his last sexual assault. Although semen samples taken from victims matched Helms' blood type, authorities said, the suspect always wore gloves or socks over his hands, preventing fingerprint comparisons. In one case, investigators said, a hair was linked tentatively, but not conclusively, to Helms.

Hillsborough County investigators said the area's victims were in their mid-20s and 30s and that Helms had no prior association with them. He threatened the women with a steak knife, police said at the time.

Until last month, there were no problems listed in the supervision of Helms.

But Helms came into contact with law enforcement at 3 a.m. June 5, when he tried getting into a gated community so he could return an umbrella to a 17-year-old girl, corrections officials said. Hillsborough's State Attorney's Office was notified about a curfew violation.

On June 15, investigators determined Helms hadn't been truthful with a probation officer during a visit days earlier, according to the corrections department.

"He and a young woman at the residence gave a false name; later it was discovered that his visitor was the same 17-year-old girl involved in the curfew violation," according to an e-mail to the Tribune from Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff. "Helms was instructed to have no further contact with this girl or another underage girl he admitted befriending."

A violation of probation/warrant request was sent to Hillsborough on June 15, and a hearing was set for July 22. But on the evening of June 26, Broward deputies saw Helms in the company of a 17-year-old girl – despite an instruction not to by his probation officer, corrections officials said.

Information from Tribune archives was used in this report. Reporter Josh Poltilove can be reached at (813) 259-7691.

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