Call him the happy rapist.
A brutal serial rapist — who terrorized his victims by holding knives to their throats and slammed one poor woman’s head into her hallway stairs in Chinatown — smiled in court today as he was arraigned on five Manhattan attacks carrying a 25-years-to-life prison sentence.
Accused fiend Vincent Heyward, a 21-year-old, musclebound Manhattanite who once worked for a Virginia moving company, pleaded not guilty this afternoon in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Dressed in a bright orange corrections uniform, he let a small grin play across his lips as prosector Janine Gilbert uttered the words, “There were four rapes and four incidents of forcible anal intercourse.”
Heyward had conveniently left his DNA at each of the four rape scenes, and additional DNA was obtained when his fifth victim — the Chinatown woman who suffered an attempted rape — drew blood in fighting him off, prosecutors said.
Those samples, taken from the Aug.1 to Sept. 7 spree, let cops know right away that they were dealing with a single rapist on a one-month spree — even before they knew who he was, said Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau.
“This case shows the importance of DNA,” Morgenthau said in announcing this morning that Heyward had been arraigned on charges of predatory sexual assault, rape, criminal sexual act, burglary and robbery.
Morgenthau credited the arrest to excellent police work. An eagle-eyed cop noticed Heyward sitting in front of his apartment on Edgecombe Avenue at around 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 15, and realized he resembled sketches and video of the rapist.
Shown a copy of the sketch, Heyward bizarrely said, “Yeah, that does look a lot like me,” sources said.
Heyward faces additional assault charges for allegedly slugging a police officer while in custody.