The man is believed to have assaulted two women on Oct. 21 near Eastern Boulevard.

The man suspected of assaulting two women Oct. 21 near Eastern Boulevard just outside of Fayetteville appears to have killed himself, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office reported Monday.

The man was identified as 40-year-old Jeffery Miles Jacops of the 5100 block of Perfection Lane near Hope Mills, according to the Sheriff's Office news release.

The woman said they met a man with a motorcycle in Fayetteville’s Massey Hill area on Oct. 21, and they said Miles sexually assaulted them on a dead-end service road near South Eastern Boulevard and the Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway.

The body of a man with a self-inflicted gunshot wound was reported Saturday by the Hope Mills Police Department on Corporation Drive, the Sheriff’s Office said in the news release.

“When Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes detectives arrived on scene, they noticed the decedent matched the description of the suspect in the sexual assaults that occurred in October 2018, where the suspect met with the victims in the Massey Hill Area,” the news release says. “The investigation revealed that the decedent owned a Harley Davidson motorcycle matching the suspect’s.”

The Sheriff’s office said it used a photographic line-up on Monday to confirm that the dead man is the suspect from the sexual assaults.

Staff writer Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3512.