Bronx sex offender repeatedly raped woman during five-day kidnap ordeal: prosecutors
A registered sex offender kidnapped a woman who had offered him sex for cash, brutally beating and raping her while he held her captive in a condemned Bronx building for five days, prosecutors said Monday.
Timothy Harnett, 44, a homeless man who goes by the street name “Lawless,” brought the 28-year-old victim to a fire-damaged three-story home on Briggs Ave. in Fordham Manor on April 29, prosecutors said.
The victim uses the money from her prostitution to pay for her drug habit, law enforcement sources said, making her vulnerable prey for Harnett — who had just finished parole after sexually assaulting a teen in 1999.
According to prosecutors, when the victim turned away, Harnett grabbed a tire iron and swung it into her leg and then beat and punched her. The relentless assault fractured her wrist and dislocated her knee.
Harnett took off her clothes, tied her feet with a cloth and handcuffed her wrists, and for the next five days repeatedly raped her, prosecutors said.
Though he threatened to kill her if she tried to escape, Harnett on May 2 left to go to a laundromat, and the victim saw her chance — he’d left the tire iron behind. The woman used it to break a window, then took the broken glass and cut her feet free, prosecutors said.
The woman waved down a passerby, who called 911 and flagged down an NYPD patrol car. Medics took the woman to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Prosecutors convened a grand jury and police nabbed Hartnett on Monday in another abandoned building in Harlem.
“The defendant has been indicted on multiple charges for terrorizing this woman,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said.
Harnett was charged with multiple counts of kidnapping, rape, criminal sex act, attempted sex trafficking and assault. Bronx Supreme Court Justice Raymond Bruce ordered him held without bail.
Harnett is a “level 3″ registered sex offender, the state’s highest risk level.
On May 14, 1999, he threatened a 15-year-old girl with a razor, forced her to a hotel, then kept her captive for hours while he sexually assaulted her. A Bronx jury convicted him of sodomy, which is a criminal sex act under state law, and he was sentenced to 18 years in state prison.
He was most recently released from prison in December 2020 and finished his parole last September, state records show.
Clark’s office said Harnett may have other victims, and prosecutors are asking anyone with information to call the Bronx district attorney’s Human Trafficking Unit at (718) 838-6535.
