COVID CON
‘Blue light rapist’ who posed as a cop to snare victims dies of coronavirus in Arkansas jail aged 54
A SEX fiend dubbed the "blue light rapist" because he posed as a policeman to snare his victims has died after catching coronavirus in jail.
Robert Burmingham, 54, attached flashing lights to his car to pull over lone women drivers, kidnap and rape them in Arkansas.
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He died on Wednesday at UAMS hospital in Little Rock where he had been admitted after falling ill at Cummins prison.
Burmingham's death certificate said he died from acute hypoxic respiratory failure and viral pneumonia secondary to coronavirus.
It is not known whether he had any underlying health conditions that would have made him more vulnerable to , which attacks the lungs.
But it was reported he had been in and out of hospital in the recent past.
Burmingham - who maintained his innocence - was serving a life sentence after being convicted of raping two women including a 17-year-old girl in 1997.
He was suspected of raping two more victims by the same blue light ruse, although he was never brought to trial over those attacks.
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One of his known victims, Shannon Woods, helped pass "Shannon’s Law" in 2017 which made it illegal for civilians to have blue lights on cars or carry fake police badges.
She she was relieved to hear of his death.
Shannon said: "While not everyone may agree with me, I’m happy that he has passed.
"Every few months I would get notifications that he had been released under supervised hospital release.
"It’s just another part of the closure — and it would bring me full closure if he had confessed and that information was passed on to me.
"I believe this would bring full closure to all of his victims."
The Cummins Unit jail in Arkansas is the site of a major Covid-19 outbreak that has so far infected 900 inmates and killed eight, .
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Prisons have across the US and in other countries.
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Former Trump aide Paul Manafort and rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine are among t so far.
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