Alleged serial rapist faces first trial

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (WSVN) -- A woman who said she was the victim of an alleged serial date rapist came face-to-face with her alleged attacker while giving tearful testimony against him.

He was an armed, uniformed security guard at a Publix grocery store in Downtown Fort Lauderdale. He has been accused of charming at least three female customers and luring them back to his apartment and raping them.

Thirty-six-year-old André Beadle is on trial for the first of three cases brought against him.

In June 2011, at a Fort Lauderdale Publix, he was accused of luring a 33-year-old customer for a date, just as friends. The woman said he took her to his Tamarac apartment to change out of his uniform and then bit both sides of her neck and her arms before sexually assaulting her as he pinned her down. The woman broke down in tears as she tried to recall the attacks.

Broward Sheriff's Office Detective Eric Hendel testified on Thursday, that Beadle claimed the woman was the aggressor, and he had pushed her away. "He told me that she tried to kiss him," Hendel said. "Once she put her tongue in his mouth, he became immediately turned off and wanted her out."

But then, in a videotaped interrogation, when he is told that his DNA was found on her breasts, he changed his story and said he let her have her way. "You know what?" Hendel told him during the interrogation, "you chose to lie. You know something? You've got to keep your stories straight."

The other two rape cases against him include one in which a woman said she was raped while her 3-year-old daughter was inside the apartment. "I tried different things throughout the whole ordeal," said this second alleged victim. "I hit him, I kept hitting him, I kicked him. I used my whole body to get him off of me. I bent his fingers, I used my elbows. I did everything I knew or thought I could do to get him off of me. That's all I wanted him to do. I wanted him to get off of me, and I asked him more than one time to get him off of me. I told him, 'My daughter is right there, no. My daughter is right there.'"

"As this was happening, what did your daughter do?" asked the prosecutor to this other victim.

"She asked me why I'm crying, she asked me why I'm crying, and if he was hurting me."

Though the jury has heard from two other woman describing similar situations, at least five complained about Beadle while he worked in that Publix, in the summer of 2011. Three are lined up in separate criminal cases for rape at his Tamarac apartment. Prosecutors hope the similarities between these cases will help their case rise above simple arguments of he-said-she-said.

(Copyright 2013 by Sunbeam Television Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)