Convicted rapist accused of luring girl, 15

A convicted rapist from Mt. Washington is accused of luring a 15-year-old girl into his vehicle, Pittsburgh police said Tuesday.

Officers saw Joseph Mazzoni Jr., 71, stopped on Greentree Road near Corinth Street talking to the teen about 10:30 a.m. Monday, said Cmdr. Thomas Stangrecki. The girl appeared reluctant to get into Mazzoni's yellow Honda convertible, he said.

Once the girl got in the car, detectives Scott Evans and James Smith approached Mazzoni's car. The girl told the officers she was walking to a nursing facility where her mother works. Mazzoni told the girl he worked with her mother, according to a criminal complaint.

The officers called the girl's mother, who said she did not know Mazzoni and did not give him permission to drive her daughter anywhere, the complaint states.

When the officers asked whether he had a criminal history, Mazzoni told them he was charged with raping a 25-year-old woman when he was younger, according to the complaint.

Officers later confirmed that Mazzoni was charged with rape, sodomy and assault and battery in 1960 and pleaded guilty to the charges the next year, receiving a 12- to 24-year prison sentence, according to the complaint.

Mazzoni followed the officers to police headquarters, where he told them he began assaulting women when he was in his early 20s and that he had raped five or six women, according to the complaint. However, Mazzoni denied that he intended to hurt the girl and that "his aggressive days were behind him," the officers wrote.

Police charged Mazzoni with luring a child into a vehicle. He was jailed on $500,000 cash bond.