Hillsborough: Rapist could get out in May

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Rapist could get out in May

The man known as the Hyde Park rapist, tied to a dozen sexual assaults, could be released from prison in a few weeks.

By AMY HERDY

TAMPA -- At first, the rookie detective did not recognize the telltale signs: how the suspect cut the phone lines and entered the south Tampa apartment through an unlocked kitchen window, how he beat and raped the woman at knifepoint, then stole her jewelry.

What he had, Tampa police Cpl. Jerry Herren soon learned that March morning in 1986, was another assault by the Hyde Park rapist, a man who had attacked more than a dozen women since 1981.

In what Herren attributes to a mixture of rookie luck and basic police work, he solved the case in about two weeks, helping get Bobbie Joe Helms sentenced to 27 years in prison in August 1986.

Now, because of time taken off his sentence for good behavior, Helms could be released from prison May 3. He has told prison officials he intends to return to Tampa to live with his sister on 32nd Street.

That prospect alarms Herren and Cpl. Charlie Wolf, a Tampa detective who worked the case for 18 months. Both men remember the pain Bobbie Joe Helms caused his victims and doubt that he has changed.

"In my opinion, he's an incredibly dangerous person," Wolf said.

His scheduled release has local and state officials scrambling to keep Helms in prison under the Jimmy Ryce Act, a law that went into effect this year to keep certain sex offenders locked up after their prison terms are served.

A team of people from various state agencies is expected to evaluate Helms. Afterward, "we determine whether to pursue involuntary civil commitment," assistant state attorney Michael Sinacore said. Only sex offenders who are evaluated by psychiatrists and found to be dangerous by a judge or jury during a civil trial can be confined under the law.

Helms, now 41, could have been eligible for release earlier had he not been disciplined for several offenses in prison, records show. Those offenses included a threat to rape a female prison employee and masturbating while staring at a female guard.

Keeping Helms locked up is what one victim prays will happen.

The woman, who the Times is not naming because she is a rape victim, says she will never forget the early spring morning in 1986 when Helms attacked while she slept. Holding a knife to her back, Helms beat the woman, then raped her. "I thought I was going to die," she remembered. "I screamed, "Please, God, help me!' "

Afterward, Helms forced the woman into a bathroom while he ransacked her home, stealing several pieces of jewelry and a watch.

Within six hours, Helms, who worked in the kitchen of a south Tampa restaurant, sold the $1,000 worth of jewelry for $20 to a man who knew him as "Bull." The jewelry was eventually pawned. One day, while flipping through hundreds of pawn shop cards, Herren recognized a description of the stolen jewelry. It was traced back to Helms.

Helms was charged with sexual assault and burglary in April 1986. In two separate plea bargains, Helms confessed to the Tampa case and another in Pinellas County, where he raped a 16-year-old girl. He received 10 years in prison and 15 years' probation for the Tampa case, and was sentenced to an additional 17 years in prison for the Pinellas rape.

Helms also took detectives on a tour of Hyde Park, giving them details and confessing to 11 other sexual assaults, four attempted sexual assaults and armed burglaries, and 26 burglaries.

Upon entering prison in August 1986, under sentencing guidelines at the time, Helms automatically qualified for nine years off his sentence, or what is called gain time.

While serving his sentence he earned more gain time, and due to good behavior recently, could qualify for even more, potentially moving up his tentative May 3 release.

-- Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report.

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