For 15 years, a suspected serial rapist known as “Ether Man” raped and terrorized at least 11 Albuquerque women, many of them UNM students at the times of the assaults.
In October, Robert Bruce admitted in a Colorado courtroom to being Ether Man. Bruce is accused of sexually assaulting women in the southwest from 1991 to 2006 by placing a chemical-soaked cloth over their mouths and trying to rape them, earning him the nickname “Ether Man.”
He is already serving a 64-year prison sentence for attempting to murder a Colorado police officer who was scheduled to testify against him in a peeping Tom case.
On Friday, Bruce was sentenced to an additional 24 years in prison for two attempted sexual assaults in Colorado.
Friday’s sentencing brings Bruce one step closer to being tried in New Mexico, but Bernalillo Country District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Kayla Anderson said it is unclear when Bruce will be extradited to New Mexico.
Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg told KRQE that Bruce faces more than 100 years in prison if he is convicted of the rapes here.
“He understands that he is going to spend the rest of his life in prison,” Brandenburg said.
Mandra Ryan was a student at UNM in 2000 when Ether Man broke into her home, took pictures and began to stalk her.
“He would unscrew the sensor lights in our backyard,” Ryan said in a 2009 KRQE interview. “He would oil all of the doors; break in.”
Ryan said she believes he was planning his final attack on her, just as he’d done to his rape victims, but she confronted him before he had the chance.
After catching Ether Man lurking in her yard, she yelled at him and he ran away.
Ryan said he attacked two of her friends soon after he stopped stalking her.
In July, Bruce wrote a letter from his Colorado prison room to one of his New Mexico victims.
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“I don’t fully understand why I did what I did to you,” he wrote. “I don’t know if it was for the adrenaline rush, power or control or exactly what the driver was. I only know that I was addicted to doing it and could not stop. The remorse and guilt were always with me, but would diminish over time to a level where I would do it again. I battled with it all my adult life.”
