Police set up dummy in Va. hotel bed, capture serial sexual assault suspect

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Brandon Murdock (Photo: Prince William County Police Department)

A serial hotel sexual assault suspect has been arrested after Prince William County police set up a sting to catch him.

Police said 31-year-old Brandon Murdock was breaking into rooms at a Manassas hotel and sexually assaulting his victims as they slept. One of the victims is a 63-year-old woman while the other two were teenage girls.

Police said they do not believe Murdock had any connection to the Wyndham Garden Hotel on Vandor Lane and it is unclear why he kept coming back to the hotel, which is more than an hour away from where he lives in Front Royal.

In the latest incident, police believe Murdock sexually assaulted the 63-year-old victim on Sept. 15 as she was staying at the hotel while visiting from overseas.

Investigators also believe Murdock is also responsible for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl and 16-year-old girl back in October of 2015. The teenagers were staying at this hotel on a school field trip from South Korea.

In all of the cases, the victims said they woke up to a man touching them inappropriately, but managed to get away each time.

But last Thursday, Prince William County police placed a dummy in a hotel bed and on the first night of their sting operation, Murdock ended up breaking into that very hotel room and was apprehended.

“To the point where we were looking at anything, we conducted this operation,” said Prince William County police spokesperson Jonathan Perok. “We didn’t know if it was going to take days, weeks or months, but we were kind of, at that point, where we needed to try pretty much anything we could to get this offender off the street because we were worried that the offenses would escalate.”

He added, “We have three victims right now, but we didn’t want there to be a fourth. So we did this operation out of luck hopefully to try and catch this person, and thankfully we did.”

Police fear there could be additional victims and are asking anyone with information to come forward to them.

Murdock is scheduled to have his preliminary hearing in court on Nov. 21.