Rape suspect may be connected with Anchorage cases

A Palmer man suspected of rape in two Valley cases is also a suspect in two similar Anchorage rapes that occurred last year.

Micah J. Beshaw, 26, was arrested Friday in Glennallen in connection with kidnapping and sexual assault charges for allegedly attacking a woman walking home from work last fall, and he is also suspected of taking a teen-ager from the Palmer McDonald's where he worked as a manager and raping her. Beshaw has been a prime suspect in similar cases in Anchorage, according to Anchorage Detective Eric Hamre.

Beshaw is lodged in the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility on $100,000 cash-only bail. Friday he was scheduled to be arraigned on a grand jury indictment.

The similarities in how the suspect operated -- handcuffing or duct taping his victims, kidnapping them and other undisclosed details -- cause Anchorage police to believe Beshaw is the man they are looking for.

No arrest have been made because the two victims who came forward to report the rapes were not available as the case proceeded. One could not be located, Hamre said, while the other decided she did not want to assist police.

"There are a lot of very understandable reasons for why a victim doesn't want to talk about what happened," Hamre said. "In a sense, they might feel re-victimized every time they have to tell the story. But in our situation, it really posed a difficulty."

Because the cases are not closed and charges could result, he declined to address specifics but said Beshaw is suspected of using the same tactics.

At the time of the Anchorage rapes, Beshaw was a Pinkerton Security Guard working in an Anchorage parking garage. Both victims were under 20 years of age, Hamre said.

In all four rape incidents, the suspect appears to be savvy about evidence issues, investigators say. He wipes his victims down to destroy links to him, yet made the mistake of not using a condom in the one Valley case. A semen sample was collected at Valley Hospital from that victim, Trooper Detective Leonard Wallner said.

Hamre said the suspect doesn't appear to use excessive violence, that serious physical injury didn't result in the rapes. Yet Hamre was uncomfortable knowing that the two rape cases were going unsolved, leaving the attacker to strike again.

Early in the Valley investigation, McDonald's personnel gave statements to police and were expected to testify before the grand jury. Beshaw worked as a manager interviewing prospective McDonald's workers at the Palmer fast food outlet.

He held on to applications, one employee told police, and did not file them. Instead, they ended up in his truck, where police later found them, Wallner said, resulting in Beshaw possessing personal information about applicants.

On Sept. 30 when the 16-year-old girl was kidnapped and raped, Beshaw and two other employees were opening McDonald's, according to their police testimony. At some point in those early morning hours, Beshaw allegedly left the store for several hours, leaving it in the care of the two employees. His McDonald's uniform was later found in a dumpster.

The girl had been hired by Beshaw to begin working that day. Instead, she told police, as she came to work at around 5 a.m., she was taken from McDonald's by a masked man, handcuffed and raped, then released at Sutton.

A McDonald's supervisor said Beshaw was suspended from work about a week after the incident in connection with not fulfilling his duties. The fast-food outlet had been missing money from the cash register, which they could not account for during Beshaw's shifts, police records say.

In October, the owner of the Daron Street apartments where Beshaw lived filed a forcible entry detainer in Palmer District Court asking for legal help to evict Beshaw, his girlfriend and her daughter as well as one other person living in the apartment. According to that filing, they were behind in their rent.

Police lost track of Beshaw briefly at the end of November, when he and his girlfriend moved to Glennallen to stay on his father's homestead. After the state lab released DNA results, trooper investigator Wallner was able to arrest Beshaw and bring him back to Palmer.