EVIL: David Albert Mitchell is arraigned yesterday for the broad-daylight Central Park rape of a 73-year-old woman. He’s been accused of raping other senior citizens — and some say he’s gotten away with murder. Inset, yesterday’s Post. (
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Accused Central Park rapist David Albert Mitchell has spent most of his life behind bars — but residents of his hometown say he still got away with the murder of a 54-year-old mother there, and cops are eyeing him for it.
When Barbara Flake — who toiled cleaning houses for $25 a day to support her only son, Billy — disappeared from Jenkinjones, W. Va., in 2002, “Everyone pretty much believed David did it,” said Wayne Mitchell, who lives in the area.
The victim’s son, who said he was the last person to see his mother, told The Post that he had initially been a suspect. But cops also have long considered David Mitchell a “person of interest,’’ a law-enforcement source said.
“Everyone in this county told the state police that he was the one who done it, and they just wouldn’t listen,” said Billy Flake, now in his 40s.
“They just kept saying to me, ‘You tell us what you’ve done with her.’ Are they nuts? I’m not going to kill my own mother.”
Residents said that authorities found the woman’s remains near his family’s house — and that Mitchell had been squatting near her property.
A friend of the son said Mitchell even told him that he had put her body behind a log “so I could watch her,” Billy recalled.
Mitchell’s one-time girlfriend, Saretta Mitchell, said her old lover bragged about killing people — including Barbara Flake.
“He bragged to me and some of our friends at different times that he had murdered two people,” she said.
David Mitchell’s long and sordid criminal history began in 1989, when the quiet 18-year-old was accused of raping and killing an elderly woman, Annie Parks in Jenkinjones.
He was eventually acquitted at trial.
“The state alleged that he had signed a statement admitting crimes, but it was . . . not in his handwriting, and he only printed part of his name: Daid,” said Sid Bell, the lawyer who represented him at the time.
Bell said his client had been close with the victim.
“There was no DNA evidence,” either, the lawyer said.
Soon after the acquittal, he was back in court — this time accused of raping and robbing another elderly woman in the same town.
He served eight years after pleading to the robbery.
Then, in 2003, Mitchell was convicted of kidnapping Saretta Mitchell in Tazewell, Va.
He was sentenced to 10 years in that crime, with all but eight suspended.
David Mitchell was released last March but then drunkenly threatened to “kill everyone” in his halfway house, claiming he was robbed.
He was put away again for six months.
Even that didn’t last long.
He was then picked up for failing to report to his probation officer — and let off on time served.
That was his last encounter with the law before allegedly raping, robbing and beating an elderly birdwatcher in broad daylight in Central Park on Wednesday.
Additional reporting by Kirstan Conley and Erin Calabrese