Charges: Predatory offender commits multiple sex assaults an hour apart in S. Mpls.

Barely two months from leaving prison for back-to-back sex attacks, a 32-year-old man punched and sexually assaulted three elderly women at separate south Minneapolis locations within an hour one evening last month, according to authorities.

Stephen L. Blanks, of Minneapolis, was charged Tuesday in Hennepin County District Court in the last of the attacks on Jan. 3 with first-degree criminal sexual conduct and first-degree aggravated robbery. Blanks made his first court appearance Wednesday and remains jailed without bail.

The latest alleged string of attacks brings to at least five the number of random sexual assaults Blanks has been accused of in less than six years.

In May 2011, Blanks was convicted of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct for robbing and sexually assaulting a woman he didn't know in February of that year near 32nd Street and Chicago Avenue S. then sexually assaulting another woman a few blocks away no more than 15 minutes later.

Blanks was given a 5½-year sentence, was registered for life as a predatory offender, and then left prison in late October 2016 and was put on intensive supervised release for an additional 10 years.

This level of supervision calls for four face-to-face check-ins every week, electronic home monitoring, mandatory work or school, daily curfews and random drug testing.

Along with the five or more sex-related cases, Blanks' criminal history in Minnesota includes convictions for theft, fleeing police, burglary and disorderly conduct.

A 79-year-old woman who lives in the 1600 block of S. 6th Street was put in an ambulance about 7:20 p.m. and told an officer that a man she didn't know put his hand over her mouth and dragged her from her apartment door to a stairwell. He punched her in the face, and was pulling on her clothes in an effort to rape her. He also tried and failed to get away with her purse.

Witnesses heard the woman's screams and saw the man running away.

Just a few minutes earlier, one of the other assaults with "the same modus operandi" occurred in the same block. At that scene, there were two victims, ages 27 and 79, police said.

The first attack happened about 6:20 p.m. in the 2100 block of Bloomington Avenue S., with a 75-year-old woman being targeted for sex and robbery in an apartment building.

Surveillance footage from the assault on Bloomington allowed police to identify Blanks as the suspect. He later turned himself in to authorities and was booked into jail Monday.