Robert Todd Burmingham is dead. The convicted kidnapper and rapist known as the “Blue-Light Rapist” died at 54 from complications of COVID-19, officials said last week.
.@AsaHutchinson confirms Burmingham had #COVID19 #Coronavirus #ARNews #KATV7 https://t.co/4o4eHkHaqv
— Angela Rachels (@arachels) May 14, 2020
Burmingham was serving a life sentence for raping four women. His M.O.:He used a blue-light to pull over the victims. One of those women was a 17-year-old girl when it happened.
“I was on my way home, actually from Lonoke,” Shannon Woods told Fox 16 in a 2017 interview. “I was pulled over by who I thought was a police officer.”
The July 1997 incident marked the end of a seven-month hiatus for the suspect, and a sparked a new search for him, according to a New York Times report at the time. Burmingham was arrested the following September.
Crazy to think I covered this in the late 1990s. Who knew this would be the outcome? His victim, Shannon Woods, told me, “I had many different emotions, but I am relieved he is deceased.”
‘Blue Light Rapist’ dies from COVID-19 in Arkansas prison https://t.co/y2k8H7Lk8H
— Dawn Scott (@dawnerscott) May 14, 2020
What does Woods think now that Burmingham is dead? She told KARK that she’d been getting notifications that Burmingham was getting medical treatment. The last one arrived in April. But she said that now that he’s dead, she doesn’t have to worry about him possibly escaping while on hospital leave.
“Am I happy?” she said. “No. Am I sad? No. I am relieved.”
UPDATE: The official cause of death according to the Pulaski County Coroner’s Office was COVID-19. Burmingham died in the ICU unit at UAMS. #arnews @KATVNews https://t.co/ZRICCSBWJT
— Marine Glisovic KATV (@KATVMarine) May 14, 2020
[Screengrab via Fox 16]
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