A Las Vegas man is in custody in connection with more than half a dozen sexual assaults in Los Angeles County since 2015, and LAPD detectives now say they believe he may have assaulted more victims after using aliases online. social and dating apps.

Matthew Werner, who turned 46 on Tuesday, is accused of being a serial predator who met women using aliases and then turned violent, raping and sexually assaulting them, the Los Angeles police detective said. Brett Hopkins said Tuesday.

“He would meet the women under a false name. In one case, he posed as a footballer”. Hopkins said, and once he was alone with the women, sometimes in hotels, he would “take cocaine and become aggressive and forcefully attack them.”

“He was a true Jekyll and Hyde,” Hopkins said of Werner’s turn from smooth operator to violent bully.

Werner was arrested in Las Vegas on February 28 in connection with five sexual assaults in Los Angeles in 2015. He was bought back to Los Angeles at the time and is being held in the Los Angeles County jail in lieu of $3 million in bail. He has yet to be formally charged for those attacks.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office charged Werner last year with a reported rape on March 4, 2015, and an assault of rape and oral copulation on September 7, 2019. Those charges stemmed from an investigation by the The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office of Special Victims on the 2019 case. He has pleaded not guilty and remains in custody pending a hearing scheduled for later this month.

Werner had previously been investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department in connection with an alleged rape in the Mid-Wilshire area in 2015. However, prosecutors declined to file charges in that case, deeming the evidence insufficient.

After connecting Werner to several other violations in part through forensic evidence, Hopkins said, the LAPD now believes the Feb. 25 Mid-Wilshire attack was one of a series for which it was responsible in 2015.

The detective said the first reported assault Werner is suspected of occurred in North Hollywood on February 21, 2015, followed by the Mid-Wilshire attack. Werner is accused of attacking another woman in Hollywood on March 4 and sexually assaulting another in the Wilshire area on July 23 before striking again in the West Valley, according to Hopkins.

In each case, what started out as a romantic reunion, once they were alone, turned into an alleged violent sexual assault, Hopkins said.

Authorities are also looking into a 2015 indictment from Illinois involving Werner.

In 2017, he did not contest driving without a license in connection with a stop in Los Angeles County the previous year.

Werner, originally from Massachusetts, is being held at the Twin Towers Correctional Center.