Feb 19, 2008 6:32 am US/Eastern
Accused Livery Cab Rapist: 'Nothing Was Rape'
Torkieh Sadagheh Claims He Simply Drove 2 Women Home
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Torkieh Sadagheh, 28, of Brooklyn is accused of posing as a livery cab driver and picking up two women at separate times, before climbing into the back of the car and attacking them.
CBS
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A man was seen on surveillance footage forcing a woman into a white SUV in September outside a popular Lower East Side nightclub.
CBS
Torkieh Sadagheh says the police have their facts wrong.
The 28-year-old stands accused of posing as a livery cab driver and raping two women over the weekend, but he said Monday night the police have got the wrong guy. The police, on the other hand, think Sadagheh may be connected to other attacks.
"Absolutely not. Those accusations … those were drunk women," Sadagheh said. "Nothing is rape."
Police say early Sunday morning, Sadagheh, posing as a livery cab driver in a Lincoln Town Car, picked up 23-year-old Monica Maneiro.
Maneiro had just finished her shift as a dancer at Scores West in Chelsea. As they headed uptown, she says Sadegeh jumped in the back seat and tried to rape her. Maneiro was able to fight off the attacker and get his license plate as he fled the scene just a few blocks from her home.
"I mean I got the plate because I didn't want him to go unpunished for what he had done to me," Maneiro said. "And so it wouldn't happen to anyone else."
But police say 30 minutes later it did happen to someone else.
Investigators say Sadagheh returned to Scores and picked up another 23-year-old woman, whom he did rape inside his car. Sadagheh says what happened was not rape.
"There were drunk women. This was an accusation. And I took her back home."
When CBS 2 HD went to Sadagheh's home in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn earlier Monday, relatives slammed the door.
Police say they caught Sadagheh thanks to the courageous actions of the last two women he allegedly attacked.
"When he was trying to restrain me I was just trying to calm him down. I didn't really fight back too much because if I would have he probably would have gotten more upset," Maneiro said. "So what I did was I was just trying to calm him down. I was trying to open the door at the same time without him seeing. And finally when I got the door open, we both fell back."
Maneiro says she and her attacker fell out of the car and in a definite twist of fate a real cab happened by. She jumped in, told the driver to step on it and called 9-1-1 while she still remembered that license plate.
Police say when the suspect returned to the location 30 minutes later, four women got into the car thinking it was a cab. Three of them he dropped of at L'Express at 20th and Park because they wanted to get something to eat.
The fourth one stayed in the car and wanted to be taken home. Several blocks away, police say, he got into the back seat and raped her.
Detectives believe Sadagheh is connected to sexual assaults of women who thought they were getting into a livery cab outside The Box bar on the Lower East Side in September and October, and possibly other assaults as well.
CBS 2 HD's Pablo Guzman contributed to this report.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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