She bought a gun and kept it in bed with her as she tried to sleep.

She traded a comfortable home for an apartment complex with plenty of lights outside and people inside.

Still, a year would pass before she felt secure enough that memories of her encounter with the man now believed to be a brazen serial predator in several states no longer would taint every choice she made.

Only after learning that Joshua Michael Ridings, the man linked by DNA to her attack and the vicious abduction and assault on an 11-year-old West Virginia girl, had been identified and jailed could the woman who helped to bring about his arrest finally relax.

"[I was] the most friendly, outgoing person you'd ever meet. I'm not so friendly anymore," said the 32-year-old woman, who lives with her 2-year-old child in Leitchfield, Ky. The Post-Gazette does not identify victims of sexual assault.

The woman was attacked Aug. 23, 2006, by a naked man who forced his way into her former home on the pretext of buying furniture, then savagely beat and attacked her while her toddler slept nearby.

A year later, investigators matched her assailant's DNA to that of the man who, while wearing only socks, snatched a girl from a street in Wheeling, W.Va., drove her across the Ohio River and raped her behind a church in February.

Because the man's name and whereabouts remained a mystery, law enforcement officials turned to the Leitchfield woman last fall for help in identifying him. In October, she sat for two days with FBI agents and a sketch artist, producing a detailed drawing of her attacker and a description of his distinctive tattoo.

Two months later, that information would lead FBI and Wheeling investigators, who already had more than 1,000 tips about suspects, vehicles and similar incidents, to identify their suspect.

Mr. Ridings, 28, a divorced pipe fitter and boilermaker from Owensboro, Ky., was charged Dec. 21 and indicted last week by a federal grand jury in West Virginia for crossing a state line with intent to engage in a sex act on the Wheeling girl.

"Her information was critical. Without that woman, we might not have him yet,'' said Kevin Deegan, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Pittsburgh office. "I think we would have gotten him eventually, but her information was very helpful.''

The Leitchfield woman initially saw her attacker when he spoke to her at her yard sale. Unlike other women whose thoughts were clouded by the stress of their encounters, the woman formed a clear memory of his appearance before their encounter turned aggressive, Agent Deegan said.

"She was a very good, very detailed recollection. She was very upset that he attacked the girl in Wheeling, so she wanted to do whatever she could," he said. "And she did."

Mr. Ridings also faces charges or is considered a suspect in incidents in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, authorities said, including several women's encounters with a naked man. He is jailed in Newburgh, Ind., in one of those cases.

Authorities in Wheeling will prosecute him after the Newburgh case is resolved. They have filed court papers to prevent his release, said Sharon L. Potter, U.S. attorney for northern West Virginia.

"It's been a roller-coaster,'' the Leitchfield woman said of the 17 months since her attacker approached her in her yard. He asked whether she had furniture to sell, and she offered to show him a dresser and table she hadn't yet carried outdoors, she said.

The man offered to buy the dresser and said he would come back later. The woman was inside, wrapping up a telephone call with a friend, when he poked his head in through her back door.

"He came in, and he had nothing on but boots. He grabbed my face and shoved me into the laundry room," she said. "I was fighting him the whole way."

The man threw her over the washing machine, the kitchen table and dining room furniture as she struggled. He tore off her clothing and beat her, leaving bruises all over her body, she said.

The woman said she tried to dissuade her attacker by telling him she would kill him.

"He said, 'How are you going to kill me when I'm about to break your neck?' '' She lied, telling him she had AIDS.

The man paused briefly, she said, then grabbed her by the hair, replied "I don't care,'' and assaulted her on the floor, she said. "It's over, baby,'' he told her, then fled.

After the attack and investigation that followed, the woman, who recently had separated from her child's father, said she was too anxious to stay alone.

"I went and got a gun and I slept with it every night," she said. She also moved to a complex where the rental agent placed her near the office and close to the well-lighted building entrance.

"I was looking over my shoulder for at least a year,'' she said. "He was still at large and it wasn't until, shoot, probably July that I gave up and stopped worrying over it.''

In late October, investigators notified her that DNA evidence retrieved after her attack matched the DNA of the man who attacked the Wheeling girl. FBI agents arrived to quiz the Leitchfield woman extensively.

They quickly held a news conference in Wheeling. They also circulated a bulletin containing the woman's description of her attacker and his tattoo -- a barbed-wire chain circling his right bicep, accompanied by the letters N, L and E.

That alert spurred the memory of Detective Troy Gossett in Mr. Ridings' hometown of Owensboro, Ky., about 50 miles from Leitchfield. While investigating the rape of a woman outside an apartment complex in January 2007, police received a tip that prompted them to question Mr. Ridings, Detective Gossett said.

Mr. Ridings and his truck matched descriptions provided by the victim of that assault, but he was not immediately charged, Detective Gossett said. Mr. Ridings allowed police to question him and also provided a DNA sample for testing, although no DNA was retrieved from that crime scene for comparison, the detective said.

"Around Halloween, the FBI put out the teletype [about the Wheeling case]," Detective Gossett said. "I was reading it and thought it was kind of odd that Josh had told me he'd worked in Wheeling and needed to get back there to a job as a boiler maker."

He alerted Wheeling police that Mr. Ridings, who by then was jailed in Owensboro on a parole violation, had a tattoo of a barbed-wire circle and the word "Nicole'' on his arm. The DNA sample provided by Mr. Ridings during that earlier investigation matched the DNA evidence from the Wheeling attack, investigators said.

"It was a pretty good feeling when they called back,'' Detective Gossett said.

The Leitchfield woman also identified a picture of his tattoo. Homing in further on Mr. Ridings, investigators determined his daily route to work from June to December 2006 took him through Leitchfield.

In January 2007, investigators said, Mr. Ridings moved to Wheeling and began working at AEP's Mitchell Power Plant south of Moundsville a day before the Wheeling girl was attacked Feb. 20. He remained there for about six months, staying with his brother at a campground near Dallas Pike east of Wheeling, along Interstate 70, investigators said.

Witnesses said Mr. Ridings initially drove a pickup truck while living there, investigators said in court documents. But after "enormous publicity'' about a truck driven by the Wheeling girl's attacker, he returned briefly to Kentucky and drove back to West Virginia in a car, investigators said.

Authorities in Newburgh, in southwestern Indiana, accused Mr. Ridings of breaking into the apartment of a television reporter while he was partially nude on June 27. He ran when she confronted him, but a surveillance camera captured his sport utility vehicle, leading police to identify him and contact police in Owensboro, Ky., about 45 miles away, Detective Gossett said.

Police in nearby Evansville, Ind., also believe Mr. Ridings exposed himself to passers-by, drove around the city while nude and tried to assault a woman while armed with a knife that same day, Evansville Sgt. Shawn Smith said. He has been charged with criminal confinement in the attempted assault.

"It doesn't look like he was here long, but he got around while he was here,'' Sgt. Smith said.

After learning of those incidents, Owensboro authorities moved to revoke Mr. Ridings' parole. He was still jailed there Dec. 21, when he was charged in the attack on the 11-year-old girl.

Since then, Mr. Ridings has been moved to the Warrick County Jail in Newburgh, where he also awaits prosecution. Investigators are seeking to determine whether he was the partially naked man who tried to abduct an 18-year-old woman in Martins Ferry, Ohio, two days before the Wheeling girl was attacked.

Detective Gossett said he also is investigating Mr. Ridings in connection with other incidents in Owensboro in which women were approached by naked men. He also plans to present evidence about Mr. Ridings to a county grand jury in connection with the rape of the Owensboro woman in January 2007.

No charges have been filed against Mr. Ridings in the Leitchfield attack. But the victim whose recollections helped to identify him said she intends to pursue his prosecution there as well.

"I've been keeping up with all [developments in the case]," she said. "He's not going to get away with it.''