Pasco Rape Suspect Committed Suicide, Authorities Say

ZEPHYRHILLS A man suspected of beating and raping a woman after he invited her into his home Monday was found dead Tuesday morning behind his family's Land O' Lakes business from what authorities are calling a suicide.

Pasco County sheriff's deputies were called to Hynes Discount Aluminum, 4901 Land O' Lakes Blvd., just before 7 a.m. after relatives discovered the body of Richard Hynes, Zephyrhills police said.

He had hanged himself, authorities said. Police had been searching for Hynes, 31, in Zephyrhills and Land O' Lakes.

Early Monday morning, police said, Hynes asked a woman he knew into his home on Zephyrhills' Camden Avenue, where he struck, choked and raped her, and forced her to stay there about six hours, Sgt. Rob Perrault said.

Hynes bound the woman's wrists to a chair with plastic ties and told her he had a gun, but she never saw one, Perrault said.

"At one point, he threatened to hang her and hang himself," Perrault said. "He had tied a noose in the garage from a rafter."

Somehow, the woman convinced Hynes to let her leave Monday afternoon, and she promised to come back, the sergeant said.

"She was able to leave and come straight here, and she was in quite a panic," he said.

Around 1:15 p.m., a detective heard loud banging on a locked lobby door at the police station and saw the distraught woman, who had bruises and cuts on her body. She didn't require hospitalization, Perrault said.

She told the detective what happened, and by 3 p.m. police had begun watching Hynes' home.

"There was no sign of any activity in the house," but a pickup was parked outside, Perrault said.

By 7 p.m., police had a search warrant in hand. The sheriff's SWAT team went inside but found no one there. The house was a mess and everything was as the woman said it would be, according to Perrault.

Police put out a bulletin on Hynes and a van, but authorities didn't locate him until his body was found Tuesday.