OKINAWA CITY. Okinawa — The Naha District Prosecutor’s Office filed charges of rape and housebreaking against a U.S. civilian Friday afternoon in connection with an Aug. 22 incident, and police officials said evidence collected in the case also may tie the suspect to an unsolved 1998 rape.
“We have formally filed charges against Dag A. Thompson,” stated Deputy Chief Prosecutor Hiroyuki Kawami in a written statement concerning the August incident. “We understand that the Okinawa prefectural police are to now re-arrest him for another rape incident.”
A police spokesman confirmed Friday that evidence collected in the August case, in which Thompson, a 34-year-old former Marine, is accused of raping a 21-year-old Japanese woman, may connect him to the 1998 rape in southern Okinawa. The spokesman wouldn’t comment on the nature of the evidence.
Thompson, who works as an Army and Air Force Exchange Service car salesman on Kadena Air Base, was arrested Oct. 15 in connection with the August incident.
Thompson was transferred Friday evening from a police station in Okinawa City, where he was held for 20 days of questioning, to a police station in Naha, where he will be interrogated for the 1998 case, according to the police spokesman.
According to Okinawa police, the alleged victim in the August incident said a man entered her home around 1:50 a.m. through a door she had kept unlocked for a family member. She told police she saw her assailant’s face in the light of her cell phone, which rang during the attack. She said the man was a Caucasian male, in his early 40s with curly brown hair.
The sketch and other information gathered by police led them to Thompson, who lives in the Nakaima district of Naha with his Okinawan wife and two children.
According to a police report, Thompson was assigned to Camp Kinser until his 1994 discharge. He returned to Okinawa in 1998, the report stated.
According to charges filed Friday, Thompson “raped the woman after he pressed her down and grabbed both of her wrists to suppress resistance.”
In the June 13, 1998, rape case, a Caucasian man broke into a woman’s home at 5 a.m., raped her and stole about 8,000 yen (about $77.66) from her handbag.
