Swindle said forensics experts still are trying to determine who committed the February rapes. Our officers are in there and will continue the investigation. He had been in the Tuscaloosa County Jail since Feb. 27, when police arrested him in connection with the burglary of a house near 15th Street. Court-ordered blood tests confirmed investigators' suspicions that Hope was involved in the Jan. 25 rape. The victim also identified Hope in a live lineup as her attacker.
Hope is no stranger to law enforcement.
He has served more than two years in various state prisons on three felony convictions. In March 1995, he was found guilty of stealing jewelry, cash and a telephone cord from a residence on Thomas Circle, near the UA campus, and threatening to kill its female inhabitant. A third-degree escape charge was added to his record after police said he tried to evade them. One month later, Hope was convicted of drug possession in Jefferson County. Since the 1970s, Swindle said, police have received complaints about Hope, who has lived in his car around the fringe area of campus and with his sister in another part of Tuscaloosa.