BLOOMINGTON - Three of four women allegedly raped by former police officer Jeff Pelo testified Tuesday about their experiences of waking to seeing a man standing in their apartments and the sexual assaults that followed at gun and knifepoint.

Pelo is charged with raping four women between 2002 and 2005 and stalking a fifth woman between 2005 and 2006.

A woman identified as A.M. in court records told the jury that a man dressed in black wore a ski mask as he attacked her on Jan. 17, 2002. A knife was put to her neck, she said, by the man who said he had been watching her from across the street as she came and went from her apartment on Bloomington's east side.

The woman whom police believe may have been Pelo's first rape victim was not able to identity Pelo's photo or voice from police samples, according to testimony.

A victim referred to as K.H. told the jury she thought she was going to be killed during a sexual assault on April 4, 2003. The woman's eyes and mouth were covered with pieces of duct tape, and several longer strips of tape were wrapped around her head.

"He told me he would shoot me if I screamed but he didn't want to hurt me," K.H. testified during an hour on the witness stand.

Like three of the four women, K.H. said she was ordered to bathe after the assault.

Earlier Tuesday, a woman known as A.L. testified that she attended Pelo's arraignment in 2006 and intentionally rode the elevator with him that day to see how he'd react to seeing her.

"I made my own decision to come to the arraignment," A.L. testified Tuesday. "I wanted to see how this man would react to me. I wanted a sense of reality, and I wanted control over a situation that had traumatized me for a very long time."

The woman took the elevator in the Law & Justice Center with Pelo and his wife, Rickielee Pelo. She heard Pelo's voice when he spelled his name for a court bailiff. When the brief hearing was over, Pelo held the door for A.L. as they left the courtroom, she said.

During her testimony, A.L. recounted the details of her attack, which ended when the suspect left her in a bathtub inside her Bloomington studio apartment, her hands bound and a cord wrapped around her neck.

Early in the assault, A.L. said her attacker asked her "what can I do to get you to do this without kicking and screaming?" She responded that he could wear a condom.

The assailant told A.L. that hers was not his first sexual assault.

A.L. said that when he appeared at the end of her bed, he said: "I don't want to hurt you. Don't make me hurt you."

A.L. testified that she had a habit of leaving the door to her apartment unsecured.

Like the final rape victim who testified Thursday, A.L. said she tried to start a dialogue with her attacker. He put a pillow over her face and stuffed a camisole in her mouth during portions of the incident, she testified.

When he was about to leave, he told her not to call police and that he'd be watching her, she testified. "We both know that's not possible," she said she told the attacker, saying she'll eventually have to call for "insurance reasons."

A.L.'s attacker eventually left.

About 18 months after the sexual assault, A.L. was asked to look at a photo lineup of possible suspects. She picked Pelo's photo from a group of six men.

"One face stood out to me immediately. I said 'that is the face that I see when I remember my attacker.' That was the face of Jeff Pelo," A.L. told the jury.

The second week of testimony continues today with more witnesses expected to testify about the former police sergeant's alleged habit of stalking women.