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Scooter-riding rapist claims innocence in horrific Queens sex attack: ‘It was consensual’

The New York Daily News - 5/14/2023

The scooter-riding ex-con arrested for knocking out and raping a woman in Queens confessed to a prole officer, but claimed that his victim wanted to be beaten and sexually assaulted, prosecutors said Saturday.

“I might be in some trouble, but it was consensual,” Tony Kempsey told his parole officer in a panicked phone call on Tuesday, about two days before police nabbed him hiding out in a Brownsville apartment.

Kempsy, 58, who is homeless, barricaded himself inside the Junius St. apartment near Glenmore Ave., refusing to come out, before he ultimately surrendered for attacking and raping a 49-year-old woman on April 30 on 48th Ave. near 72nd St. in Elmhurst.

The three-time felon is accused of rolling up to his victim as she walked along a Queens sidewalk. After the two talked, the victim agreed to take a motorcycle ride.

They rode for a few minutes before arriving on a desolate Queens street. The two walked together for a few moments before Kempsy suddenly lashed out and “punched the victim in the face repeatedly,” Queens prosecutors said. When she fell to the ground, Kempsy jumped on top of her and raped her, they said.

“The rape was caught on video, and it’s pretty brutal,” NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig told reporters earlier this week. “(He) knocks her to the ground. Knocks her out. She sustained bleeding to the brain. It was a traumatic incident, so she doesn’t recall a lot.”

The victim spent four days at Elmhurst Medical Center recovering from the assault, prosecutors said.

“This kind of horrific attack is a nightmare,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said Saturday. “The defendant evaded arrest for weeks and now will be held accountable.”

After an exhaustive search for surveillance footage, investigators found video of Kempsy before the rape, entering a building in Lefrak City to visit someone he knows, police said.

The images were shared to the media, and he was ultimately fingered by his own parole officer, who recognized his picture, prosecutors said.

It wasn’t immediately disclosed if the parole officer identified him to police before he called her claiming the rape was consensual.

Kempsy was charged with rape in the first degree, sexual abuse in the first degree and assault. A Queens criminal court judge ordered him held without bail. If convicted, he faces 25 years in prison, cops said.

But prison is a place Kempsy knows well: he’s already done three stints upstate, most notably a 20 year stretch for a 1992 Queens murder at the Roosevelt Ave. subway station in Queens.

He got into an argument on the E train with Amaury Rodriguez, who pulled a handgun and fired several rounds in the melee. Kempsey, who was struck in the head, exited the train and happened upon an off-duty NYPD detective, cops said.

Kempsey pointed out the gunman to the detective. But before the officer could arrest Rodriguez, Kempsey swung a bladed martial arts weapon that looks like a sickle known as a Kama at the man’s head, fatally piercing the 20-year-old’s skull.

Kempsey was convicted a year later, but that was overturned on a technicality. He was later retried and convicted a second time.

He was earlier paroled in March 1990, after a one-year stint for stolen property possession. Before that, he was conditionally released on parole after serving 2½ years for burglary, according to court records.

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