|
Paedophile's take on sex abuse
25/07/2005 13:34 - (SA)
San Jose - A man who authorities say could be the most prolific United States child molester was crafting a lengthy memoir about his sexual exploits with boys when he was arrested, said police.
Authorities also said they had cracked "99%" of the detailed code that Dean Schwartzmiller used in notebooks he kept, apparently to chronicle crimes both real and imagined.
Schwartzmiller was arrested in May after investigators said they discovered notebooks with 36 700 handwritten entries of boys' names, descriptions of their anatomy and codes for suspected sex acts.
The notebook entries, apparently coded for each boy's anatomy and personality, were being entered into a spreadsheet.
Schwartzmiller's fantasies
Police had not said how many victims those entries represented. Many items were duplications and some might describe Schwartzmiller's fantasies.
Police lieutenant Scott Cornfield said investigators seized a memoir that Schwartzmiller had been writing about his exploits with boys. Typed out, the manuscript was about 4cm thick.
Cornfield said that in Schwartzmiller's words, "every boy was beautiful and every one wanted him."
Schwartzmiller was being held without bail on one count of aggravated sexual assault on a child under 14 and six counts of lewd and lascivious conduct on a child under 14 involving two 12-year-old cousins. He faced two life sentences if convicted.
Additional charges against Schwartzmiller
Schwartzmiller was not talking to police and apparently had not been very forthcoming with his public defender, either.
His lawyer, Melinda Hall, said she still knew very little about the case and was not getting much information from her client.
She said: "I've learned more from the newspaper."
Prosecutor Steve Fein would not discuss how many alleged victims authorities had heard from, or whether any of the reports might result in additional charges against Schwartzmiller.
But as investigators followed up on hundreds of phone tips from around the country, they said they were confident Schwartzmiller would not go free again, as he had in the past despite at least three molestation convictions and a dozen arrests across over three decades.
Child pornography
Cornfield said: "This time we've got him. This guy's not going anywhere."
Police also said they confiscated CDs, DVDs and videotapes, including child pornography, as well as computer servers and hard drives, which were being evaluated by specialists at the FBI's Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory in Menlo Park.
Investigators said Schwartzmiller, who went by a variety of aliases and earned a living doing stucco work, repeatedly avoided trials and got out of jail or prison early.
Despite his lengthy criminal record, he was not required to register as a sex offender.
It was a minor traffic accident on May 17 that brought Schwartzmiller to the attention of police.
- AP
|
News
