Woman lured to Wellington home, raped at knifepoint, PBSO says. She may not be the first.

Editor's note: This story contains descriptions of sexual abuse that readers may find disturbing.

WEST PALM BEACH — Three months after an accused serial rapist bonded out of an Orlando jail, Palm Beach County deputies say he lured a woman — his sixth suspected victim — to an empty home in Wellington and sexually assaulted her at knifepoint.

"Why are you doing this?" the woman said she asked. He answered: "Because I can."

The woman said he assaulted her for an hour, a white-handled knife in one hand and a cellphone in the other, recording the attack. She said he told her to moan as though the sex were consensual, ending the assault only when the woman's cellphone began to ring. He handed her $20 and left.

Deputies charged Vincent Laing Jr., 32, with sexual battery with a deadly weapon in the May 7 incident. Laing has been linked to five other rapes committed in a similar manner last year in Orlando, according to his arrest report. Of those five, he was arrested for two. Of the two, only one prompted criminal charges by the Orange County State Attorney's Office.

None were enough to keep him in jail ahead of trial. An Orlando judge agreed to lower Laing's bail last year at the behest of a defense attorney who said that, to the best of her knowledge, Laing had no violent criminal history.

The same judge revoked his bond in the wake of this month's arrest. If convicted of the assault at the Estates at Wellington Green Apartments — where Laing moved after bonding out of the Orange County Jail in February — he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Laing is represented by the county Public Defender's Office, which, as a practice, does not comment on open cases.

Detectives: Vincent Laing Jr. forced women at knifepoint into abandoned apartments, raped them

Six months before he bonded out of jail, investigators in Orlando said Laing's fifth suspected victim ran out of an apartment complex, naked and screaming: That man raped me!

A neighbor gave the woman clothes and called the police. Officers detained Laing as he tried leaving the apartment complex, paving the way for his first arrest.

The woman, a Texas resident who was house-hunting in Orlando, told investigators that a man approached her while she walked around the complex. She said he pressed a knife to her side and guided her toward an empty apartment, pinned her to the ground and told her to be quiet.

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The man filmed the assault with his cellphone and tried to cover his face with his jacket, she said. It slipped for a moment — long enough for her to point him out in a police lineup later that day.

A different woman said she was raped at knifepoint in the same complex two months earlier, but police were unable to identify the perpetrator. After the Texas woman identified Laing, officers invited the victim from the earlier assault back to the police department, where she, too, identified Laing as her assailant.

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Orange County prosecutors charged Laing with the Texas woman's rape and signaled that if the case proceeds to trial, they'll introduce evidence linking him to four additional assaults, for which he has never been charged.

Jason Gunn, a spokesperson for the State Attorney's Office, said Tuesday that Laing is "a danger to the community and needs to be off the streets." He declined to say why prosecutors charged him in only one of the reported rapes but said Laing has a "clear pattern of violence" and is being prosecuted "vigorously."

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The pattern, Laing's suspected modus operandi, includes the knife, the cellphone recording and the venue. Three of the four occurred in vacated and abandoned apartments. The Wellington home where Laing is accused of inviting in his latest target, who he met on an adult-meetup website hours earlier, was undergoing renovation and similarly unoccupied.

After the assault, the woman told investigators that she entered the man's phone number into an online database and found the name "Vincent Laing Jr." She searched the name on Google and discovered articles about the two prior assaults, as well as a post by Orlando police urging others with information to come forward.

She did.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, the Palm Beach County Victim Services and Rape Crisis Center can help. Reach their helpline at 561-833-7273, or toll-free at 866-891-7273.

Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Suspected serial rapist accused again after release from Florida jail