Redwolf Pope, who leased apartments in Santa Fe and Seattle, was arrested late Tuesday on a warrant accusing him of raping unconscious women and recording the assaults on video.
Police are investigating whether Redwolf Pope, a well-known Native American activist and entrepreneur arrested this week amid accusations that he drugged and raped a woman in New Mexico last year, may have committed similar crimes in Seattle.
“There may be other victims in Seattle, and we want them to be encouraged to reach out to us,” Seattle police spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said Thursday.
Pope, 41, leased apartments in Santa Fe and Seattle, according to police records, and was arrested late Tuesday in Phoenix on a warrant out of New Mexico.
A probable-cause affidavit filed in Santa Fe a day earlier accused Pope of videotaping himself having sex with multiple unconscious women in Santa Fe and possibly Seattle, as well as secretly video recording a houseguest showering in his Capitol Hill apartment, according to court records.
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A 34-year-old Washington woman was among at least four seemingly incapacitated and seminude females depicted on the videos recently provided to police, according to the detective’s affidavit. Some of those images depict Pope’s face while he’s having sex with the seemingly unconscious women, the records say.
The affidavit states the woman, who had known and trusted Pope for years, told a Seattle detective last week she suspected Pope had drugged and raped her in August 2017 when she was visiting Santa Fe.
The Seattle Times does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault without their permission.
Pope is being held without bond in Maricopa County, Arizona. Amy Sirignano, an Albuquerque attorney who is representing him, declined to comment Thursday, saying she hasn’t yet had the chance to speak with Pope.
Juan Ríos, the public information officer for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, said Friday that Pope is fighting extradition from Arizona to New Mexico.
Pope is an activist who has appeared as a spokesman for the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” to discuss Native American perspectives on Thanksgiving. Last year, he gave a TEDx Talk in Seattle about oil-pipeline protests at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.
Pope’s LinkedIn page describes him as a co-founder and chief executive for several tech startups, and it lists Pope as an attorney who has worked for the Tulalip Tribal Court since February 2012. But Tulalip Tribal Court Director Wendy Church said in a phone message Thursday that Pope doesn’t work as a lawyer for the tribe.
“He is not an attorney to my knowledge,” Church said. “He was never an attorney here; he was an extern in our civil legal aid office.”
A spokeswoman for the Washington State Bar Association, which licenses attorneys in Washington, confirmed Thursday that Pope is not a licensed lawyer in this state.
Pope attended Seattle University from 2008 through 2013 and received a law degree there, but a university spokesman said Thursday that Pope didn’t finish a master’s degree in public administration that is listed on his LinkedIn page.
If you need help
News reports of sexual-assault allegations could be a trigger for victims and survivors of abuse. Here are some resources:- The King County Sexual Assault Resource Center offers a 24-hour resource line (888-998-6423). Additionally, KCSARC can help connect people with therapy, legal advocates and family services (kcsarc.org/gethelp).
- UW Medicine’s Center for Sexual Assault & Traumatic Stress (depts.washington.edu/hcsats) offers resources, including counseling and medical care. For immediate help, call 206-744-1600.
- For readers outside King County, the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs lists 38 Washington state providers that offer free services. (wcsap.org/find-help)
- RAINN: Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network provides a free, confidential hotline (800-656-4673) and online chat (hotline.rainn.org) with trained staff members.
About the same time Pope attended Seattle University, he was party to a string of domestic-violence civil cases — both as a respondent and a petitioner — involving a 30-year-old woman, court records show. Seattle police arrested and booked Pope on a domestic-violence report in 2011, but he was not charged in that matter, records show.
The ongoing sexual-assault investigation of Pope emerged in early June, when a houseguest contacted Santa Fe police after duplicating videos and photos she found on Pope’s iPad, according to the probable-cause affidavit.
The houseguest, a woman who sometimes stays at Pope’s apartments in Santa Fe and Seattle, told police she and Pope’s male roommate discovered a hidden camera in the bathroom of Pope’s apartment on Capitol Hill. They later took the device with them to Santa Fe, discovering that it contained multiple videos of the houseguest “showering while she was fully nude,” the affidavit states.
Fearing the videos had been uploaded to the internet, the houseguest later checked Pope’s iPad and found 23 photographs and four videos depicting multiple other women, the affidavit states. The houseguest used her cellphone to copy those images, including some in which she recognized her friend, the 34-year-old Washington woman.
During an interview in Marysville last week, the Washington woman told a Seattle police detective that she suspected Pope had drugged and raped her last year during the final night of her visit to Santa Fe. The woman said Pope had picked her up from a party and given her a drink during the ride, according to the affidavit.
The next thing she remembered was waking up in a hotel bed with her nylons missing, and Pope later explaining to her that she’d told him she “wanted to be together.”
The woman “declared with 100% certainty” to the Seattle detective that screenshots of tattoos on one of the women captured in the videos were her own tattoos, the affidavit said. Probable cause was found to arrest Pope for investigation of rape, sexual contact, aggravated battery and false imprisonment based on his alleged actions against the Washington woman alone.
Seattle police ask anyone with information on the case to call the department’s Sexual Assault Unit at 206-684-5575.