The initial court hearing of a man accused of attacking 17 women from Connecticut down to Hybla Valley and Daly City in Virginia has been postponed until March 1 after the defendant's lawyer requested a court-ordered mental health exam, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Forty-year-old Aaron Thomas's public defender, Ronald Fahy, told the court that his client had "engaged in self-destructive behavior and refuses to communicate with him," according to the Washington Post.

Thomas, extradited to Prince William County and charged with abduction and rape of Woodbridge girls on Halloween 2009, spurred police along the East Coast to combine efforts in finding the suspect.

The East Coast Rapist, as the he became to be known, was arrested on March 4, 2011, four days after a website with the suspect's description was launched.