He offered women rides to their Fort Worth homes. Then, he raped them, police say

A Texas man accused of being a serial rapist in Fort Worth offered women who were walking down a street rides home before he sexually assaulted them, a Fort Worth detective said Friday.

Pedro Samarrippas, 48, also is accused of brandishing a handgun during an attack in April 2011.

Samarrippas was arrested last month in McAllen after DNA linked him to two sexual assault cold cases in Fort Worth that occurred in 2010 and 2011. He also is a suspect in a 2002 sexual assault in McAllen.

The Texas man also is linked to a third Fort Worth attack on a woman in 2011.

Samarrippas was returned to Fort Worth earlier this week from McAllen and was in the Tarrant County Jail on Friday with bond set at $100,000.

Jail records indicated that Samarrippas faces charges of sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault in the Fort Worth cases.

In July 2010, a woman was walking down a street on the city’s Northside during the afternoon when a man pulled up beside her and asked if she needed a ride home, according to Fort Worth police reports.

The woman had seen the man in the neighborhood so she believed it would be fine to get a ride home.

“Once she was inside of the car, he had it where you couldn’t get out,” said Fort Worth Detective Kerry Adcock on Friday in a telephone interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “He started driving away from her home and that’s when she tried to get out, but she couldn’t.”

The man later identified as Pedro Samarrippas is accused of driving her to a dirt road in northwest Fort Worth, raping her and then abandoning her. She flagged down authorities a few minutes later.

A woman was walking on a Northside street about 2:30 a.m. in April 2011 when a man later identified as Samarrippas offered her a ride. She got into the car when he pulled out a handgun and demanded that she get into the vehicle, Fort Worth police said.

Samarrippas is accused of driving her to a Fort Worth park, where he sexually assaulted her. At some point, the woman fled the car and contacted authorities.

A third Fort Worth sexual assault case occurred in 2011 when Samarrippas and a woman were going to have sex, but he brandished a handgun and raped her, Fort Worth police said.

Samarrippas lived in the Fort Worth area from 2003 to 2014, police said.

Detectives believe that there could be more victims of crimes committed by the suspect during the time he lived in the Fort Worth area.

Police officials said that the Texas Rangers had received a grant allowing police agencies like Fort Worth to conduct comparisons of unknown DNA through the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) to help identify suspects in unsolved sexual assault cases.

That’s what was used to track down Samarrippas, Fort Worth police said.

Detective Adcock and Texas Rangers Lt. T. Gooding began working on the case in May 2020, and they were later able to match Samarrippas’ DNA to the suspect in the Fort Worth cold cases.

Police asked that anyone who may have been a victim of Samarrippas to call at 817-392-4351 or Tarrant County Crime Stoppers at 817-469-8477.