Florida authorities capture fugitive drama instructor who disappeared from Connecticut after rape conviction 44 years ago

Authorities in Florida have captured a former Mount Holyoke College drama instructor who fled and disappeared 44 years ago after being convicted of a brutal rape, robbery and kidnapping in Wethersfield.

A U.S. Department of State security officer investigating passport fraud tracked Douglas E. Bennett, now about 76, to his home in Clearwater, Florida, where he was arrested Wednesday.

Federal authorities in Florida said they were alerted to Bennett after he applied to renew a phony passport he had obtained previously in the name of a 5-year-old boy who died near the college in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1945. Investigators flagged the passport because it was associated with a late-issued Social Security number and the investigation led to Bennett.

Bennett was accused, convicted and sentenced to from nine to 19 years in prison for violently attacking a 22-year old Wethersfield woman in her home on Valentine’s Day in 1974. Contemporary accounts in The Courant described him as a former women’s drama instructor at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Bennett claimed he didn’t commit the crimes and one of his lawyers, then-renowned Boston defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, said Bennett would be cleared on appeal, based on new evidence that included results of a lie detector test.

Prosecutors told the jury at Bennett’s trial that, armed with a handgun and wearing a mask, he forced his way into the victim’s house, looking for her father. He is accused of robbing the victim, binding her hands, covering her eyes with tape, dragging her outside the home and raping her.

Bennett is then accused of forcing the victim into a car, where she was raped again and then sexually abused for another hour by Bennett and an accomplice. Bennett was arrested two months later, but an accomplice was never charged.

He hired Bailey for his appeal, but lost in 1976 when the state Supreme Court upheld his convictions.

Bennett had been freed from custody after posting a $25,000 appeal bond and disappeared in 1976 after losing the appeal.

Edmund H. Mahony can be reached at emahony@courant.com.

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