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LONG BEACH — A man believed to be the serial rapist who terrorized women in California and Washington state for more than eight years was arrested three days after police stopped him on an unrelated drug charge and performed DNA tests. 

“People of Long Beach, sleep well tonight, sleep well,” Police Chief Anthony Batts said Monday as he announced the arrest of Mark Wayne Rathbun, 32, of Long Beach. 

Rathbun was arrested Sunday night in Oxnard for investigation of rape after police said DNA evidence linked him to 13 assaults dating to 1996. He was jailed in lieu of $2 million bail and had not yet secured an attorney, police said. 

The Long Beach man is also a suspect in 18 other rapes and attempted rapes, said Long Beach police spokeswoman Nancy Pratt. 

Nine of the rapes he was arrested for occurred in Long Beach, police said. The first one, on Aug. 1, 1996, was in Seattle, with its victim a 40-year-old woman. The other two occurred earlier this year in the Southern California cities of Huntington Beach and Los Alamitos. 

Rathbun was arrested Thursday for investigation of possessing a crack cocaine pipe after he was stopped while riding a bicycle just three blocks from where a man had broken into a house and attempted to assault a woman earlier in the day. He was one of several people in the area questioned. 

“We have made it a practice to investigate anybody who’s within the perimeter of these sorts of crimes,” said police Sgt. Paul LeBaron. 

Authorities said Rathbun voluntarily gave a DNA sample before being released on bail on a misdemeanor charge of possessing drug paraphernalia. He was arrested Sunday night after authorities said lab results came back matching his DNA to the 13 rapes. 

Pratt said circumstantial evidence makes him a suspect in the 18 other cases, including another 1996 rape in Seattle. The other assaults and attempted assaults occurred around Southern California. 

In most cases, the attacker entered the homes of women who lived alone, gaining entrance either late at night or early in the morning through an unlocked window or door. He always wore a mask, was sometimes nude and sometimes covered the faces of his victims, who ranged in age from their early 30s to their 80s. 

The string of 31 attacks began in May 1996, with the first two in Seattle. 

Authorities believe the rapist then moved to Southern California, where the first attack was reported in Long Beach in January 1997. 

The vast majority of the attacks occurred within a 20-mile radius of Long Beach, and for several years the perpetrator was known as the “Belmont Shores rapist,” after the well-to-do waterfront community where many of the earliest assaults happened. 

LeBaron said Rathbun’s mother lives in Long Beach, but that he has moved in and out of the area over the last several years, staying with friends. He also has ties to the Seattle area, LeBaron said. 

His arrest came just 2 1/2 days after Long Beach police announced a $50,000 reward leading to the rapist’s arrest. Although tips poured in as result, none of them led police to Rathbun. 

“It could be coincidence or it could be his carelessness or maybe we’ve learned enough through this investigation that we were finally able to adapt to his movements,” LeBaron said. “But the bottom line is, he’s caught.”