The Associated Press

JACKSON — A Bolton man suspected in the deaths or disappearances of at least 10 women in the Bolton and Edwards area since the late 1990s is accused of sexually assaulting a woman who said he tried to bite off her ear, authorities said Monday.

Ricky Lavert Franklin was in the Hinds County Jail and was charged with kidnapping, rape, aggravated assault and sexual battery in the alleged attack this weekend on a 21-year-old woman, Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith said.

Smith said the case is developing and more details would be available today.

Franklin had been suspected in at least 10 slayings or disappearances — and was charged in at least one of the crimes — but has never been convicted because of a lack of evidence, Smith said.

“I do feel like I have a very dangerous man behind bars,” Smith said.

Franklin will turn 38 on Wednesday. It wasn’t immediately clear if he had hired a lawyer.

Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said this morning that his office would speak with officials in Hinds County to pursue the possibility that Franklin could be a suspect in the slaying of Angela Shultz Shiers Barrentine of Vicksburg, who was last seen on Thanksgivng Day 2004 in Edwards.

What later proved to be Barrentine’s body was pulled from a 1997 Ford F-150 truck in the Big Black River in Bovina the night of Aug. 2, 2005, about eight months after she was last seen.

Barrentine, then 27, was last seen in Edwards, near Belknap and Military roads driving and alone in the pickup.

About a month later, Pace said, his department was asked by the family to get involved. The Hinds County Sheriff’s Department joined the case when the investigation showed Barrentine was last seen in Edwards.

“From Day 1, this investigation led to Hinds County,” Pace said in 2006.

Mike Scott, the public defender who represented Franklin on murder charges in 2008, said he has not been contacted about the latest charges and had no comment. The 2008 charges were dismissed.

Hinds County Chief Deputy Steve Pickett said Franklin has been a suspect in an ongoing cold case investigation related to “multiple corpses” found around Bolton and Edwards in 1999. Franklin lived not far from where some of the bodies were found.

The latest assault is a “horrible crime and with the criminal history of Mr. Franklin, I am relieved that he’s in custody,” Pickett said.

The woman claims Franklin picked her up Saturday night in Jackson and took her to a club and then to his mobile home in Bolton, according to police records.

Franklin beat the woman with his fists and a bottle, choked her and tried to bite off her ear before the sexual assault, according to arrest records.

The woman is lucky to be alive because police, and possibly others, intervened in the assault, Smith said.

“We’re just thankful that he’s in custody,” Smith said. “He has been a frequent flier in the system.”

Some of the women whose bodies were found in 1999 have never been identified.