A man who police believe is a notorious sexual predator who broke into the homes of numerous young women near the Georgetown and University of Maryland campuses and raped them while they slept has been arrested.

Ernesto Mercado, 54, was charged in connection with five home-invasion sexual assaults from 2008 to 2012 in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington said that his DNA also connected him to a sixth attack in Maryland in 2009.

His arrest marks a huge break for cold case investigators trying to identify the man known as the Georgetown Cuddler, a nickname that spread among students even as it was widely criticized for seeming to downplay the seriousness of the attacks.