Howard Bruce
An inmate charged with being the “Ether rapist” was sentenced this month to 156 years in prison after pleading guilty to nine charges of rape.
Howard Bruce was serving a 64-year sentence for attempting to blow up a police officer’s home when a DNA test linked him to 40 rapes in New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado
Bruce was known for using chemicals to subdue his victims, one of whom eventually moved to San Luis Obispo.
It was 1996, two days before Robert Sachs’ daughter’s 18 birthday and the week of finals at her high school. After working at a restaurant in New Mexico, she arrived home at about 1 a.m. and went to bed.
Sachs’ daughter awoke to discover a man holding a cloth soaked in ether over her face beside her bed. She caught the man’s hand between her teeth and clamped down. He eventually ripped his hand from his potential rape victim’s mouth and fled through a bedroom window.
Bruce will serve his time in a Pueblo, Colo. prison.
