Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Tuesday, October 20, 1998
Authorities also were trying to locate 190 women listed in the man's address book.
The search was the top story on national radio news and in afternoon newspapers, prompting about 100 women to call authorities, said Ulla Andersson, an assistant in the investigation.
The Stockholm District Court identified the suspect as James Patric Kimball, 40. A statement from the court said he is originally from California, but did not give the city. Andersson said he had been in Sweden since 1992.
"This is a lethal man on the loose in society," prosecutor Jan Frykman said on Swedish TV. "To spread a deadly sickness in this way shows a murderer's instinct."
A Stockholm court on Tuesday ordered him taken into custody on suspicion of rape and assault.
Kimball came to police attention two weeks ago after a woman said she went home with him and was given what she believed to be a drink laced with drugs. Under police questioning, the man said he was carrying HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to newspaper reports.
Prosecutors said they did not have sufficient evidence to hold him at the time. But an investigation turned up an address book in which the man reportedly listed the names of 190 women, with marks indicating he had sexual intercourse with at least 16 of them.
The man reportedly met many women in bars and told them he was a party- arranger.
At least eight people in Sweden have been convicted of assault for engaging in unprotected sex while knowingly being HIV-positive, including a man who infected his wife.
In Finland last year, former New Yorker Stephen Thomas, a rap singer and nightclub doorman, was sentenced to 14 years in prison on 17 counts of attempted manslaughter for having unprotected sex with women without telling them he was HIV-positive.
In the United States, it is a crime in at least 29 states to knowingly infect someone with the HIV virus.
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