Murder charge filed in July 4 abduction
July 23, 2007
Adapted from CBSNews.com
Prosecutors charged a convicted sex offender with kidnapping, raping and killing a 12-year-old girl who was snatched from an alley behind her family's home during a July 4th fireworks celebration.
According to the charging documents, the man led investigators to the girl's body.
The girl died from a blow to the head, according to papers filed in Superior Court. Her body was found near a lake and authorities said the man’s DNA was found on her.
She was seized from behind her family's home during a fireworks display on July 4. Investigators said her father saw a gray van, and his partial recollection of the license plate helped them track down the man.
During their investigation, detectives said they uncovered two other victims: one who was kidnapped on her way to school in 2000 and another who lived with the man as a teen. He is charged with rape in those cases, as well as failing to register as a sex offender. He pleaded not guilty to those counts.
The 42-year-old immigrant came to the U.S. in the 1970s after his mother married a U.S. soldier. He was convicted of incest in 1990 for raping a 16-year-old female relative and was sentenced to two months in jail plus five years of counseling. He told his counselors that he had been raped by an older brother as a child, according to a mental evaluation filed in county Superior Court as part of that case.
He is being held in isolation at the county jail on more than $2 million bail.
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