April 26, 2001 -- A courageous rape victim helped capture her attacker yesterday by calling the cell phone he stole from her and telling him she wanted to see him again - luring him into the hands of cops, authorities said.
"Why don't you come back and meet me here?" the woman told the unsuspecting suspect at the behest of police officers after she was robbed and sexually assaulted at her Queens apartment building.
The ruse led Samuel Cuspert, 29, to blithely stroll down the street to the victim's building while drinking a beer, under the mistaken belief that she had forgiven him.
The ex-con even delivered damning evidence: the victim's panties and cell phone were stuffed in his pants pockets.
"She did well, she was very good," Sgt. Jacob Brown said of the 29-year-old woman who made the convincing telephone call to the assailant.
Cuspert, who has a long criminal record, is a suspect in a series of unsolved sex attacks in The Bronx, a source said.
He was released from parole custody Feb. 22, five months after being freed on a 21/2 year prison sentence for an attempted robbery in Queens.
The drama unfolded about 12:30 a.m. as the victim, a well-dressed Chilean immigrant returning home from work by subway, walked to her apartment on 30th Road near 14th Street in Astoria.
Cuspert came "creeping up behind" the victim and "shoved her into the vestibule," Brown said.
He took $70 and her cell phone after jabbing at her neck with a pair of tweezers he plucked from her handbag. But he didn't stop there.
"I want what's behind the pocketbook," Brown quoted Cuspert as telling the victim, who had her pocketbook in front of her waist.
"She feared for her life . . . she didn't want to be hurt," Brown said. "He threw her onto the floor, ripped her pants off and had sex with her."
When Officer Thomas Galnick responded to the scene, the victim was "crying, upset and really shook up," Brown said.
After half an hour of fruitlessly searching for the predator, Brown and Galnick decided to gamble.
They got the victim to call the rapist on the stolen phone, with an eye toward making him believe she needed the phone back and really wanted to meet him again.
"We were explaining to her that he has [the] cell phone," said Brown. "She calls him and says words to the effect of, 'Look, it wasn't bad, why don't you come back and meet me?'"
The woman called from a police cell phone. Cuspert spoke to her briefly.
After 40 minutes went by, it didn't seem like the suspect would show up, and the victim was driven by ambulance to Elmhurst Hospital - just as a man fitting the rapist's description came strolling down the street.
Cops stopped Cuspert for drinking a 40-ounce bottle of Heineken and found the victim's panties and cell phone when they patted him down for a weapon.
Police said they also found $67 on him - the amount stolen from the victim minus the $3 he shelled out for his beer.
The ambulance returned to the scene to allow the victim to identify Cuspert as her attacker, cops said.
Cuspert confessed to having sex with the woman, but insisted it was consensual, investigators said. The victim said they were strangers and the encounter was forced.