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Naked woman escapes house

A man is accused of rape and kidnapping.

By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN, Times Staff Writer
Published August 8, 2007

GULFPORT - The young woman staggered to the house, naked and bleeding.

Harold Ashley and his wife, Jackie, were horrified at what they saw when they answered the door Monday night. The woman told them one of their neighbors had kidnapped and raped her, bound her with tape and left for work.

"Oh, my God, I got away, I got away," Jackie Ashley remembers the woman telling her. "He's had me there all day. I need help."

Gulfport police said the woman's story of abuse was true. They arrested James VanDyke, 38, on charges of kidnapping and sexual battery.

Police say VanDyke picked up the woman, who is a prostitute, Monday afternoon in St. Petersburg near the Gulfport border. Then, he repeatedly raped her and beat her, bashing her head with a marble object, police said. Before going to work Monday night, according to police, VanDyke bound her with tape and left her on a table in his home at 2617 47th St. S.

The woman managed to escape by wriggling loose, breaking a window and then going to the Ashley home, police said.

"It's pretty brutal," said Lt. Robert Vincent of the Gulfport Police Department. "I've been here 14 years and I've never seen anything like this."

VanDyke, a graduate of the sleep studies program at Erwin Technical Center in Tampa, has worked as a technician at Sleep Technologies of Florida for four years, said Raymond Powell, the company's owner.

As a technician, VanDyke watched people with sleep apnea or other disorders try to sleep through a monitor and wrote down his observations, Powell said. He was hired after a thorough background check, Powell said.

VanDyke has been fired, Powell said.

Lt. Vincent said there had been no complaints from patients about VanDyke. But police say VanDyke left two patients unattended Monday night so he could drive home and check on his captive.

VanDyke has been a regular client of the woman's for about three months, police said. Police say VanDyke picked her up on the street Monday before taking her to his home. The woman, who was not named because of the nature of the crime, has several prior arrests on prostitution charges.

She was in stable condition Tuesday at a local hospital, police said. According to arrest affidavits, VanDyke denies the charges.

Police have gone to his home several times in recent years, including once at the request of his then-girlfriend, who wanted police to stay there while she moved out.

In April, VanDyke called police saying his girlfriend had abducted their child. But police said the couple had joint custody and that a court case was still pending.

For the Ashleys, the experience was surreal. They said the woman shook as she recounted her ordeal. They got her a bathrobe and a chair as they waited for help.

She said he had placed her on a board after binding her and wore some type of strange helmet. "She was hysterical," Jackie Ashley, 47, said.

Her husband, also 47, says she stared into space as she talked. "It was almost like she was talking to the air," Harold Ashley said.

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Abhi Raghunathan can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com or 727 893-8472.

[Last modified August 7, 2007, 23:15:49]