Santee

A 67-year-old disabled Santee man charged with 86 sex offenses pleaded guilty Thursday to 19 charges involving three girls ages 13 to 15 just as jury selection was about to begin in his trial.

Calvert Mack, who is confined to a wheelchair, admitted the offenses before San Diego Superior Court Judge J. Perry Langford, who set sentencing for Aug. 9.

Langford estimated that if Mack serves the minimum amount of time the district attorney is requesting, he would be released at age 84.

Mack is believed to have been the ringleader of a prostitution operation that involved the three teen-agers and an 8-year-old girl from Santee who posed with seven other men in the thousands of sexually explicit photographs found in Mack’s apartment.

Mack was arrested Dec. 29, 1983. The girls testified in a closed preliminary hearing last year that they were paid several thousand dollars for performing sex acts and for being photographed with men Mack arranged for them to meet in his apartment on Magnolia Avenue.