Serial rapist Sean Williams is captured in Florida after a month on the run: Hero 7 Eleven cashier recognized his TATTOO while he was buying a hot dog and tipped off cops

A Tennessee landlord accused of raping more than 50 women was rearrested in Florida after a month on the run when a 7-Eleven worker recognized his tattoo while selling him a hotdog.

Sean Williams, 52, had already tried to escape from custody in Tennessee when he was placed alone in a transport van with a broken back window for a trip to the federal courthouse in Greeneville.

With the security camera also broken, he used a paperclip to remove his handcuffs, slipped away, stole a car, and made his way down to Pinellas County where store clerk Tasha Baumgartner remembered an alert about his distinctive Celtic Cross tattoo.

'I just felt weird about it, so I rang him up,' she said. 'He bought a hot dog. And then I went outside and I followed sort of around the corner to see where he was going, and he disappeared.

'I called the police and told them. He was in my store. I know he was,' she told newsnation.com.

Officers arrived within minutes he was arrested again after a police dog tracked him down nearby.

Police have described Williams as a 'Ted Bundy' style character who allegedly recruited a good-looking young man and a female accomplice to lure young women to parties at his apartment block in Johnson.

There he would drug and rape his guests including one who crashed into a lamppost and died on impact while trying to escape after being intoxicated.

Another suffered multiple fractures after falling from his fifth story apartment.

'I'm very, very excited. Like, that's the best news ever,' Mikayla Evans told the channel after hearing of his arrest on Tuesday night.

Williams faces Tennessee state charges of child rape, especially aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor and aggravated sexual battery.

He also faces multiple federal charges over child sexual exploitation and firearm offences.

He went on the run in 2021 after being charged with being a felon in possession of ammunition but was arrested in April when police spotted him in a parking lot at Western Carolina University.

Drugs were found during a search of his car along with electronic devices containing videos that allegedly showed him raping 52 different women.

One of his thumb drives also contained more than 5,000 images of child pornography, according to Western Carolina University Police.

In July he reportedly tried to break out of the Washington County Detention Center and he successfully escaped while being transported back to Tennessee from a detention facility in Kentucky on October 16.

Cynthia Bradford, a former tenant and neighbor of Williams, said police would sometimes come to their building, and Williams would try to hide by climbing up into the air ducts or even the elevator shaft.

'Sean is very, he's, he's weird, but he's kind of got a mastermind,' she said.

'So do I think he was able to get out of cuffs? Yes. But though I think he paid people off, absolutely.'

Ten women who have accused Williams of drugging and raping them are suing Johnson and its officials alleging they ignored repeated allegations about what was happening at his 'parties'.

'From November 2019 to 2020, Johnson City Police Department received at least six reports alleging Williams had attempted to drug and/or sexually assault women in his apartment in downtown Johnson City,' the suit claims.

'Instead of arresting Williams, however, JCPD officers treated Williams as though he were, in the words of Detective Toma Sparks, 'untouchable'.'

Investigators believe Williams lay low after his escape on October 16 living in a 'transient manner' in Greeneville, Tennessee before heading to North Carolina in mid November.

'He was a pretty slippery guy, really,' said US Marshall David Jolley.

'There are a good number of transients in that particular area that kind of live in the woods and live in some of these old abandoned houses and things, and he was able to kind of mix and mingle into that area.'

He sold his car in Greenville, North Carolina sometime around November 16 but stole another car in the town a few days later.

That car was spotted by officers in Florida who gave chase before Williams bailed out and disappeared again.

'Williams made his way from North Carolina down to Pinellas County,' Johnson said.

'And the night that he walked into this 7-Eleven, a clerk apparently recognized him there, called the police. They were able to move in on him and take him into custody. He was hiding somewhere close by the store.'

Williams, the former owner of a Tennessee building company told Fox News Digital in September that 'half of the females in town' were keen to attend his parties.

'Due to my luxury place and willingness to spend money on others, I became popular quickly,' he claimed.

'My reputation became someone with money that like[s] women and parties and people.'

He also claimed that all ten women suing the Johnson city authorities had a vendetta against him for various reasons, including 'spite for being banned from my parties, or insinuating that I was attracted to them, or a moment in the spotlight'.

'In the case of the dead girl (who I've never met) her family just feels the need to blame someone for her terrible accident,' he added.

'What they all have in common is that I was the perfect target.'

But Jolley described the arrested man as a 'predator of a human being', and compared him to one of America's most notorious serial killers.

'I heard someone describe him earlier, he has this very 'Ted Bundy' personality.

'He definitely is a very dangerous kind of human being and the kind of person we are all happy to know has been arrested and is back in custody.'