Van Dralan Dixson, the man accused of raping as many as nine women in South Dallas in recent months, is sorry. He's sorry that he raped a woman as she walked home from her job at at a fast-food chicken restaurant on September 1, then stole her cell phone, cash, and food, according to police. He also regrets the incident two days before in which he approached a mother walking with her two children and forced her to perform oral sex at gunpoint while her two children were sent to wait on their front porch.
"Those were the only two," he told investigators in an interview following his September 10 arrest in a Baton Rouge motel room. The rest were prostitution deals gone bad, he said. They'd had it coming.
See also: Dallas Police Detail Van Dralan Dixson's Alleged Rapes and the Manhunt That Followed
That's unlikely to be an effective defense against the five aggravated sexual assault charges he faces. Four of those are linked to him by DNA, police say. The fifth came on Friday based on evidence he provided during interviews with the cops.
Details about those interviews, and the weeklong manhunt that followed, emerged on Monday. The break in the case came after one of Dixson's coworkers phoned in a tip that Dixson had called him on a borrowed phone to tell them he was in Louisiana, according to The Dallas Morning News. Investigators called the borrowed phone, whose owner directed them to the motel where Dixson was arrested.
He subsequently told police that he was struggling financially and had to "provide food for his children."
In related news, the DMN reports that Dallas Police Chief David Brown issued a non-apology for identifying mild-mannered insurance salesman Alan Mason as a "person of interest" in the case.
See also: Cops' "Person of Interest" in South Dallas Rapes is a Mild-Mannered Insurance Salesman
"No one should have ever perceived or believed that Mr. Mason was a suspect," Brown told the paper's Tanya Eiserer. "If they did and the department had anything to do with that misperception, we apologize for those people that believed that."
