Shlomo Haliva

Shlomo Haliva (born 1949), known as The Weeping Rapist, is an Israeli serial rapist, murderer and suspected serial killer.

Haliva's first entanglement with the law was when he was a soldier in 1969, when he attempted to rape a Dutch tourist visiting Acre.

He met her when he was on his way to his parents' house, and volunteered to give her a tour of the Old City.

When they passed under an underground tunnel, he tried to carry out his plot but she managed to fend him off and escaped.

At trial, he apologized.

He was sentenced to pay a fine of IL100 and to two years probation.

In April 1969, after the trial had concluded, he was patrolling while carrying an Uzi, when he chanced upon a tourist who was waiting for a ride at the road junction in Atlit.

Haliva introduced himself as a member of the Beit Oren kibbutz and suggested that she go with him, so that he could take a car left by the brother and travel to Tel Aviv together.

When they reached the entrance, he attacked the woman in a field, wrapping his arm around her neck and raping her, traumatising the woman, who later on would need psychiatric treatment.

The newspapers later reported that after committing the rape, Shlomo burst into tears, claiming that he had no idea what he had done.

He then presented her his soldier's certificate, escorted the victim to a bus stop and left.

From this incident, he was nicknamed "The Weeping Rapist."

Two months after his sentence, in August 1969, he met another tourist hitchhiking for a ride near a checkpoint in Haifa.

They rode together to the workshops in the bay, where he attacked the woman and raped her while threatening with a gun.

A few months later, she spotted him by accident while riding in a taxi, leading to his arrest.

While still on probation, he sexually assaulted another girl in Haifa in October 1969.

He had met the girl on a dark street corner and raped her after asking her for directions.

After some residents of the area were awoken by her scream, he fled the scene.

The two years of probation imposed on him in June 1969 (following the attempted rape against the tourist) were added up in prison.

In November 1970, he was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment.

On October 26, 1975, Haliva was released on parole and returned to his parents' home in Acre.

Yaakovi, 23, disappeared on October 26, 1975, after leaving Haifa to travel to the Maagan Michael kibbutz where she lived.

Her body was found on November 2 in an avocado orchard near the Maagan Michael Junction, naked and in a state of advanced decay, with severe skull fractures sustained after being raped.

Haliva confessed to killing Leonor Ben Lulu, with investigators claiming that he provided an accurate description of the body's location, but wrongfully claimed that he had buried it, which was untrue.

On February 2, 1976, he was arrested again on suspicion of committing five rapes after his release.

In November of that year, Haliva escaped from prison custody when he asked the guards to go to the bathroom, but was quickly recaptured in the village of Maccabiah.

He was described by the guards as a "pleasant and educated guy."

In 1976, when he was arrested on suspicion of rape, Haliva was questioned in regard to the rape-murders of two women, Leonor Ben Lulu and Irit Yaakovi.

Ben Lulu was 24 years old when she disappeared on January 23, 1976, while hitchhiking at the Arlozorov Junction (now Namir Road) in Tel Aviv on her way back home to Tiberias, where her family were celebrating her nephew's birthday.

That Friday, employees of the Egged bus company were on strike, and there were no buses that travelled from Tel Aviv to Tiberias.

On February 17, Ben Lulu's body was found in an eucalyptus grove near Netanya.

She had been undressed, raped and then redressed, except for her shoes, which were left next to the body.

Her killer had suffocated her to death with her own scarf and a hairbrush from her handbag, which he tightened around her neck.

Her watch, ring and purse were missing from the crime scene.

In 1978, Haliva was convicted of five counts of rape and sentenced to 22 years imprisonment.

He was nicknamed "The Weeping Rapist" because he would apologize to his victims after the act.

Convicted for the murder of a woman in 1983, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Haliva was born in Hadera, four months after his parents had immigrated from Egypt.

Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Acre.

After completing 8 years of elementary school, he attended high school for two years, studying for a time at the Air Force Technical School before being drafted into the Israel Defense Forces at the age of 17, where he joined the Paratroopers Brigade.