On Friday, police arrested and charged a suspect who they believe is the "well-dressed groper" who has attacked at least four women in Manhattan this year. But friends and neighbors can't believe that 26-year-old Park Slope resident Karl Vanderwoude could be the perp: "I don’t believe it’s him," his landlady, Carmen Olmedo, told the News. "To me he doesn’t have to grope anybody. All he has to do is wink and they’d go chasing him."
Vanderwoude has been charged with forcible touching, unlawful surveillance and sexual abuse in three of the gropings—he was released without bail Friday evening. Natasha Cerda, who once worked with Vanderwoude at a hotel, told the Post Vanderwoude was "super respectful," and there's no way he's the groper: “I’m almost 100 percent sure,” she said. “I know the type of person he is, and I know if he was this sick person...he would have done something to me because he had many chances to.”
Vanderwoude was arrested after some of the victims picked him out of a lineup. Vanderwoude's lawyer Lori Cohen maintains that the suspect in surveillance photos looked generic: "There was nothing in my mind distinguishing about those photos at all. He looks no different than any well-dressed, dark-haired man in his 30s in New York," she told the News. Javier Maldonado, who said Vanderwoude held Bible study groups in his basement apartment, added: "I hope he didn’t do it."
