A 34-year-old man accused of breaking into the home of two New London women and raping them at gunpoint in the fall of 2017 has been charged by Torrington Police with carrying out a similar crime while residing in that western Connecticut town in April 2017.

Monte P. White, 34, was arrested in December after New London Police said DNA linked him to sexual assaults on Hawthorne Drive in October 2017 and Nautilus Drive in November 2017. Both women said they were awakened by a man in their bedroom who held a gun to the back of their head and sexually assaulted them. Fingerprint impressions lifted from a sliding glass door also implicated him in the Nautilus Drive crime, police said.

Torrington police say DNA linked White to the April 26, 2017, attack on a woman in her High Street home. They charged him in January with aggravated first-degree sexual assault, home invasion, first-degree unlawful restraint and third-degree assault.

The woman in that case, whose age is not provided in the arrest warrant affidavit, told police she was just moving in to the home, which was unfurnished, and was sleeping on the living room floor when she was awakened about 4 a.m. by a man who held a knife to the side of her neck, forced her to keep her head buried in a pillow so she couldn't identify him and raped her. She said that as he was leaving, he told her he was giving her $40 and instructed her, "Don't say anything to the cops."

The woman said she thought her attacker was the same person who had come into the Dollar General store where she worked about two weeks earlier, stared at her while she placed items on the shelves and flirted with her. She said he asked her for a date and she told him no, because she had a boyfriend. Police recovered video of the encounter in the store, and the woman viewed it and said it was the same man who had raped her.

Police said DNA swabs taken during a forensic examination of the woman matched DNA from White, whose genetic material is in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database. DNA samples are taken from all convicted felons in Connecticut, and White pleaded guilty to a felony drug possession charge in 2010. 

White also has a pending drug case in New London Superior Court. Working with Waterford police and the Statewide Narcotics Task Force during the month of November, the police built a case against White for selling crack cocaine three times to a confidential informant who knew him as "Lucky," according to the affidavit. Police said White drove a 2001 Mercedes CLK 430 that was dark red for a long time but recently had been wrapped to appear black.

k.florin@theday.com