By
ADAM KLASFELD
MANHATTAN (CN) - The well-dressed suspect
wrongly accused in a "plague of sexual groping incidents that beset
Manhattan" two years ago can take New York City police to trial for an
arrest that briefly made him a tabloid sensation, a federal judge ruled.
Between March and April 2012, five women
reported similar incidents of a young, tall, white man fondling them and
running away on New York City streets and a subway. Police splashed a freeze
frame from a surveillance video on posters around the city and offered a reward
for tips that led to his capture.
The suspect's dark suit and overcoat
fueled headlines that a "dapper groper," sometimes also described as
the "well-dressed groper" and "gentlemen groper," was on
the loose.
One anonymous tipster led NYPD Detective
Michael Rama to Karl Vanderwoude, a then-26-year-old banker who acknowledged
that he looked like, but insisted that he was not, the man in the footage.
Taken into the precinct for questioning on
April 12, 2012, Vanderwoude said that he offered Rama his Metrocard and his
employer's contact information to confirm his alibi, but that these leads were
ignored.
Rama formally arrested him after one of
the victims picked him out of a lineup, but Vanderwoude claims that he actually
was arrested earlier in the secure interview room.
Weeks later, Vanderwoude produced credit
card statements, sworn witness accounts, computer records and video
surveillance to win the dismissal of his case, but not before being slimed in
the New York Post as a "goon."
The tabloids cleaned up Vanderwoude's
image after his exoneration in articles reporting that he led weekly Bible
studies in his apartment.
Vanderwoude sued the city, Rama and an
unidentified police officer later that year for false arrest, malicious
prosecution, assault, battery and defamation.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Katherine
Failla dismissed all but the false arrest count, which she said hinged upon a
jury's decision on the timing of Vanderwoude's arrest.
"[A]ssuming the jury finds that a de
facto arrest occurred, it is for the jury to decide when precisely this took
place -- be it the moment plaintiff was placed in the interview room and had
his personal items taken from him, at some point thereafter when the conditions
and length of time during which plaintiff was detained triggered a de facto
arrest, or at the moment plaintiff was formally arrested," she wrote in a
44-page opinion.
A pretrial conference has been set for
July 8 to set a trial day.
"We're very satisfied that the judge
said that we could proceed based on the facts of the case," Vanderwoude's
attorney John Tumelty said in a phone interview.
The New York City Law Department declined
to comment in light of the pending litigation.
An attorney named Paul Kraft later
admitted to the groping spree and copped a plea deal that required him to take
18 months of sexual impulse control therapy in the Brooklyn-based Mustard Seed
Program, CBS News reported in May 2013.
