Minutes after a tipster said the alleged Kensington Strangler was in a house on Mutter Street, more than a dozen police officers converged on the area. Some blocked escape routes along the alley behind the house. Others ran to the front door and looked through a window.
After an officer saw an unknowing Antonio Rodriguez standing in the kitchen, among several other people inside, someone let a team including Homicide Detectives Victor Davila and William Golphin and Special Victims Unit Detectives Jimmy Owens and Eddie Lichtenhahn inside.
“He made what I would call a ‘game over’ face. My guess is that he was going to try to run out the back, but heard police out there,” the officer said yesterday. “He was silent, didn’t say a word inside. He knew why we were there. When he was driven down to Homicide, he never asked where he was going.”
He lauded “everyone from detectives and officers posing as prostitutes who put in a lot of hours” on the case, but said, “I’ve arrested guys a hundred times more difficult to arrest than he was. The hard part was identifying him. It was easy getting him in the end.”
So, how does it feel putting the cuffs on an alleged serial killer? “That part felt great.”