A Rhode Island man who had been on the run for more than two decades after being convicted of sexual assault was arrested on Thursday on a sailboat in the East River in New York City, law enforcement officials said.
The man, Ronald L. Fischer, 70, a former anesthesiologist, was accused of raping a woman during a date in 2003 while they were on a yacht of his, the Lion King, which was docked in Portsmouth, R.I. After fleeing just before closing arguments began in his trial two years later, he was convicted in absentia of first-degree sexual assault.
Mr. Fischer’s exact whereabouts during the following years were largely unknown, but in the 48 hours before his arrest this week, the authorities determined that he was in New York, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, which assisted the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies in his capture.
Officials arrested Mr. Fischer “without incident” after intercepting his 56-foot boat, known as The Silver Lining, at about 11:20 a.m. on Thursday as he was sailing on the East River toward the Long Island Sound, the Marshals Service said.
The vessel was registered under the alias Richard Graydon, according to the Marshals Service.
“This arrest demonstrates that time does not erase accountability,” Wing Chau, the U.S. marshal for the District of Rhode Island, said in a statement. “For more than 20 years, Ronald Fischer believed he had successfully escaped justice. The men and women of the Rhode Island Violent Fugitive Task Force, together with our partners, remained committed to ensuring that day would eventually come.”
On Friday, Mr. Fischer appeared at a hearing in front of Judge Jeffrey Gershuny in Manhattan Criminal Court. Handcuffed and wearing a light-blue polo shirt with gray khaki pants, Mr. Fischer agreed to waive his right to a formal extradition hearing, paving the way for his transfer to Rhode Island by July 31. He will remain in custody in New York until then.
George DeLuca-Farrugia, a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said that the authorities had searched Mr. Fischer’s residence and found several books on “how to evade law enforcement.” Investigators also determined that Mr. Fischer had sent emails to his neighbors asking if the police were looking for him, Mr. DeLuca-Farrugia said. (Prosecutors did not say during the hearing where Mr. Fischer lived, and a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office declined to specify.)
Shanti Narra, a lawyer for Mr. Fischer, did not speak at the hearing.
After Mr. Fischer is extradited to Rhode Island, the state attorney general’s office will seek a sentencing hearing on Mr. Fischer’s rape conviction as well as an arraignment on a bail-jumping charge, Timothy Rondeau, a spokesman for the office, said.
Prosecutors in Manhattan said that Mr. Fischer would also face federal charges for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
When Mr. Fischer fled his trial in Superior Court in Newport, R.I., he emailed a goodbye note to his lawyer at the time, according to Carl Ricci, a prosecutor on the case.
“Although I believe my trial has gone very well and expect to be acquitted and dismissed, the small chance of losing could carry extremely and unacceptably harsh penalties,” Mr. Fischer wrote in the email, according to The Providence Journal. “I have therefore decided not to take the risk and leave the U.S. and enjoy life in another country where I have long been carefully planning a good, safe, secure and comfortable life.”
It is not exactly clear where Mr. Fischer went after sending the email. On Friday, Justin Engen, a chief deputy with the Marshals Service, said only that Mr. Fischer had fled the United States for a time but had also traveled across the country while he was on the run.
Mr. Fischer used other aliases besides Richard Graydon during that time, Deputy Engen said, including Ronald Stevenson, Robert Anderson and Wahler Fritz. He identified himself as a chief medical officer of a bio pharmaceutical company providing online medical consulting while on the run, Deputy Engen said.
As a fugitive, Mr. Fischer was placed on Rhode Island’s most wanted list, which described him as a “master yachtsman, a world traveler and internationally connected,” according to The Providence Journal. The case received national attention, and was featured on the television show “America’s Most Wanted.”
The 2005 case was not the first time Mr. Fischer had been charged with sexual assault. In 1996, Mr. Fischer, a practicing anesthesiologist at the time, pleaded guilty after prosecutors charged him with assaulting a woman two years earlier on another boat of his, the Dreammaker, in Quincy, Mass., according to news reports on the 2005 trial.
He received a two-and-a-half-year suspended sentence and five years’ probation, according to those reports. He was also stripped of his medical license, though he was calling himself a doctor at the time he was charged with rape in 2003, said Mr. Ricci, who now works as a criminal defense lawyer.
Mr. Ricci said that the case, which initially had not attracted much attention, drew “a wave of publicity” after Mr. Fischer fled, and that a handful of women had reached out to him saying they had also been assaulted by Mr. Fischer in similar circumstances.
Mr. Ricci said he did not think any of those women had pursed their allegations further.
Miles G. Cohen contributed reporting.