Man kidnapped, raped women he met through social app, police say

By Tony Garcia

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    NASHVILLE, Tennessee (WSMV) — Special Victims detectives with the Metro Nashville Police Department arrested a man on Wednesday night who is accused of assaulting and raping two women in separate incidents in Nashville in January.

According to MNPD, a woman struck up an online conversation with 31-year-old Tanner Patterson and eventually agreed to meet him at his apartment on January 14. During the encounter, the woman said Patterson brandished a handgun and hit her with it several times when she tried to leave. She told police he sexually assaulted her and took money from her purse before she managed to escape, the report states.

In a separate incident, Patterson began chatting online with a woman through the social networking app, Monkey Run, according to the arrest affidavit. The woman let Patterson call her a car to bring her to his apartment. He met her outside his apartment around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, January 24.

“We encourage users not to disclose any of their personal data.”

Spokesperson for Monkey Run

The woman said as soon as she entered his apartment, he pulled out a gun, and she tried to leave. Patterson hit her in the head with the gun six to seven times, sexually assaulted her, and then went through her phone to erase all evidence of their interactions, according to the report.

The report states that Patterson even took a picture of the woman’s ID and her mother’s social media profile and threatened to find her and her family if she went to the police. Patterson called her a car to leave and the woman told the driver to pull into a gas station at 14910 Old Hickory Blvd. so she could call the police, according to the report.

Detectives had already identified Patterson as a suspect in the first case on January 14 and confirmed his involvement in the second incident through a photo lineup with the victim, authorities said.

Patterson was arrested on Wednesday night and booked on aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape, and aggravated robbery charges. He remains in custody on a $310,000 bond. Patterson is currently on supervised federal release for bank robbery.

Representatives for the app Monkey Run released this statement regarding the incidents:

“Our application is used by a large number of people and its main purpose is to find friends and communicate. We encourage users not to disclose any of their personal data, which is clearly stated in the chat rules of our application, which we familiarize all users with before using chats.

We use many types of content verification and moderation, use advanced AI/ML technologies in this direction, and are constantly improving it. But, obviously, if the user themselves wants to disclose their personal data, they will find a way to do this, whether within our application or in any other. That is, if the user intentionally transferred their address or any other personal information to another user, this is their personal decision and we cannot influence this in any way.”

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