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Cops: Women were raped after leaving Rittenhouse Square bars via taxi

In separate instances in the last two weeks, women who have returned home alone via taxi from a night out in Rittenhouse Square have been raped, robbed and assaulted by an unknown assailant after they were dropped off, according to police, who believe the cases have striking similarities.

In separate instances in the last two weeks, women who have returned home alone via taxi from a night out in Rittenhouse Square have been raped, robbed and assaulted by an unknown assailant after they were dropped off, according to police, who believe the cases have striking similarities.

In the latest case, a 26-year-old woman who was returning home from a bar in the area of 17th and Chancellor streets sometime around 2 a.m. Saturday had just gotten out of a taxi at Brandywine Street near 16th in the city's Spring Garden section and was walking to her door when a man came up behind her, hit her in the head and demanded her money, police said. The woman punched the male and ran, but he chased her, caught up to her and raped her, according to police. After stealing $100 from her purse the man fled east on Broad Street, police said.

Less than a week earlier, around 4 a.m. on Nov. 14, a 25-year-old woman who had taken a taxi from a bar at 20th and Walnut Streets to Broad Street and Fair mount Avenue was walking north on Broad when a stranger came up to her and said he'd show her a short cut to her house, according to police. Instead, in a vacant lot on Flora Street near Carlisle in North Philadelphia, the man chocked her and raped her before running away with $283 of her money, police said.

The women offered similar descriptions of the man. Both said he was a black man, around 5-feet-8, in his mid 20s or early 30s. One of the women claimed that he called himself "Darryl" or "Derrick" and the other said that he had a long beard, according to police.

Police did not say that these cases, which they believe could be related, have any connection to four reported assaults in Kensington in the last month. All of the victims in those cases were strangled at abandoned properties and two did not survive, according to police.

The attacker in those cases was described as a slender black or Latino man in his late 20s or early 30s, between 5 feet 8 inches and 6 feet, with a goatee and closely cropped hair.