Davie -- Police say a man who broke into an apartment and raped a woman at gunpoint Wednesday night was so brash he forced his victim to write him a check for $1,400 -- in his own name. Officers arrested Anthony R. Roberts minutes after the crime at a check-cashing store two miles from his victim's home. He had ordered the woman to make out a check to "Anthony Roberts" and write on the memo line that it was "for electrical work," according to a police report.
I don't know what the guy was thinking," said Davie police spokesman Lt. Bill Bamford. "I don't know if he thought that he put her in that much fear, ... [but] to walk into a check-cashing store like nothing happened, like she paid him for a job. That's one of the lowest forms of life."
When Roberts, 25, presented the check at the Check Cashing Store on South University Drive, a clerk got suspicious. The clerk called the phone number on the check to make sure it was legitimate.
A police officer investigating the rape answered the call at the woman's apartment. Police cruisers swarmed the Check Cashing Store, and Roberts was taken into custody after a short foot chase.
The Hialeah man is being held without bail on a host of charges, including sexual battery with a weapon, kidnapping, home invasion and aggravated assault.
Roberts' night began in North Miami, Bamford said, where he stole a silver 2004 BMW. Then he drove to a gated apartment complex near Broward Community College in Davie.
Somehow Roberts got around the unstaffed security gate and followed a woman, who was between 19 and 22 years old, up three flights of stairs to her apartment, according to the arrest report. Roberts pointed a silver gun at the back of her head and forced her inside.
He locked the door, forced the woman to her knees and bound her hands behind her back with duct tape, the report said. Then he put a piece of tape over her mouth and began asking questions, such as: Do you live alone? Are you coming home from work? Where are your credit cards?
The woman told him she had a checkbook. Roberts grabbed the book and, after cutting the tape from her hands with a kitchen knife, ordered her to write him a check, the report said.
Roberts retaped her hands, put a pillowcase over her head and raped her, the report said. Then he taped her ankles together and told her not to call the police.
"I'll come back and rape you again," Roberts told the woman, according to Bamford.
He left. The woman freed herself from the tape. At 7:42 p.m., she dialed 911.
A few minutes after officers arrived, her phone rang twice. It was the check-cashing store.
Once in custody, Roberts admitted that he forced his way into the woman's apartment, the report said. But he denied the rape. Still, Roberts' confession disturbed investigators.
"One minute he is on a crime spree," Bamford said, "and then next minute he is confessing, `Yeah, I did an armed home invasion,' like it was nothing.
"That's life in prison in Florida," Bamford continued, "even without the sexual battery."