TAUNTON, Mass. (AP) — A man who fled the state years ago has been arrested in a remote town in Maine and charged in connection with a pair of unsolved rapes, authorities in Massachusetts said Wednesday.

Sixty-one-year-old Ivan Keith, formerly of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, was taken into custody Aug. 2 in Tremont, Maine, on Mount Desert Island, Bristol District Attorney Thomas Quinn III said. Keith was living there under a new name, Quinn said.

Keith appeared in court in Taunton, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, and not guilty pleas were entered on his behalf, MassLive.com reported. Defense attorney Jason Maloney did not comment beyond saying Keith is denying the charges.

Ivan Keith, an alleged serial rapist who had been hiding out in rural Maine and is now charged in connection to multiple brutal rapes from the 1990s, ordered held without bail during arraignment in Taunton District Court. — Bristol DA (@BristolDA) August 14, 2019


Keith has been identified as the person who committed a rape outside Bristol-Plymouth Regional High School in Taunton in 1997, prosecutors said. A masked man emerged from a wooded area and threatened, bound and repeatedly raped a woman who had been walking the school track, prosecutors said.

A second alleged rape occurred in 1998 at a business in Easton, Massachusetts, when a masked man assaulted and raped a woman who was working late at a cleaning job, prosecutors said.

Quinn said Keith also failed to comply with sex offender registration. He faces a range of other charges and is due back in court on Aug. 21. He was ordered held without bail.