The Batman rapist is an unidentified English serial sex offender who committed at least seventeen sexual assaults on women in the city of Bath, Somerset, between 1991 and 2000. He is the subject of Britain's longest–running serial rape investigation, codenamed Operation Eagle, and has now eluded capture for more than thirty years. Detective Inspector Paul James of Avon and Somerset Constabulary, leading the operation, said it is "one of the most complicated and protracted investigations" that the force has ever undertaken.