Jonathan Ferguson: Rapist Lectured His Victims About ‘Prostituting’ Themselves

A Chicago man allegedly raped two women, stole their belongings, and then lectured them about “prostituting” themselves, CBS Chicago is reporting.

Twenty-three-year-old Jonathan Ferguson allegedly used Backpage.com, a website often used by people seeking casual sexual encounters (and sometimes exchanging payment for it, much to the consternation of law enforcement), to arrange a sexual encounter with a Milwaukee woman who was in town for New Year’s Eve, according to State’s Attorney Akash Vyas.

The 22-year-old victim went with two of her friends to an address on Chicago’s south side. The friends stayed inside the car while the victim went inside.

Inside the home, Raw Story reports, Ferguson raped the victim at gunpoint. He then forced her to call her friends on her cell phone and have them come inside. He then raped another woman — a 23-year-old friend of the original victim — and ordered a 30-year-old friend of the victims into a closet.

After the rapes, Ferguson emptied the women’s purses and stole everything of value, including cell phones and $300 cash, then lectured the women about promiscuity and bragging that he’d killed at least two other people in the week leading up to the assaults. He then fled the scene with their belongings.

The women put their clothes back on and returned to their vehicle, and called 911 on a cell phone that had been left in the car.

Ferguson had managed to elude police until this week. He was captured and identified by the victims, then booked into the Cook County Jail and charged with armed robbery and aggravated criminal assault with a weapon. He’s currently being held on $250,000 bail.

Backpage.com is a bare-bones website that, not unlike Craigslist, allows users to connect with each other to buy, sell and trade, as well as post jobs, community posts, and similar content. Also, like Craigslist, the site is used for people seeking sexual encounters, and according to Forbes, those sexual encounters often involve exchanges of cash. In February of 2015, according to this Inquisitr report, a Florida police chief was arrested for hiring prostitutes through Backpage.com.

The site has even been sued for being used as a means of exploiting child sex trafficking victims, according to Tech Times.

Despite boasting of having committed murders prior to committing the two rapes, Jonathan Ferguson is not, as of this post, known to be connected to any Chicago murders.

[Image courtesy of: CBS Chicago]