Aaron Thomas says he is the East Coast Rapist who terrorized women in the Washington, D.C., area and New England beginning in the early 1990s through an attack on three trick-or-treating teenagers in Virginia in 2009. His crimes, says the Washington Post, gripped the region with the kind of fear that comes from a man lurking in the darkness, attacking strangers walking home from work, waiting for a bus, moving out of an apartment, or even sleeping in their own bed.

In telephone interviews with the Post from his Virginia jail cell, Thomas for the first time publicly acknowledged that he attacked women in several states. He said he has struggled to understand why he did it, and why he did it so many times — more than a dozen rapes by his count. Police think there were probably many more. He is scheduled to plead guilty Tuesday for the Halloween attacks and on Nov. 30 for a rape. He faces the possibility of several life terms in prison. "There is no feeling. It’s just bad," said Thomas, 41. He said he felt like an animal and didn’t care about anything. “There’s no happiness. [  ]  You’re going after something that in the end makes you feel like garbage.”