Police Defend Work in Search for Molester

RESEDA —  On Nov. 3, a 9-year-old Fullbright Elementary School student was sent to the nurse after a teacher noticed her face was flushed.

She complained of a stomachache. But when her mother arrived, the child broke down, and later told her she had been abducted and raped on her way to school.

The next day a crime report landed on the desk of LAPD Detective Robert Peloquin, a West Valley sex crimes investigator.

What Peloquin knew was that a week before, a 7-year-old girl had been grabbed on her way to Sunny Brae Avenue Elementary School, but not otherwise assaulted.

What the detective did not know was that 20 minutes after the Nov. 3 attack and four blocks away, an 11-year-old junior high school student was grabbed by a man who both victims described as wearing similar clothing.

That information, which authorities say established that the attacks were the work of a serial child molester, was reported Nov. 5 to school police, but the LAPD did not hear of the crime until four days later, possibly delayed by the Veterans Day holiday, which public schools celebrated on Nov. 8.

“That was the first time we had strong evidence that we were looking for the same person,” Peloquin said.

For parents, whose anxiety has been palpable at public meetings, the realization by police failed to come quickly enough. Police have faced a swarm of criticism for not identifying a pattern and notifying parents sooner.

But for Peloquin and the police, the story of the investigation that yielded the hunt for a man who is believed to have stalked as many as 26 victims has also been an exercise in frustration.

Suspicion that some of the incidents first reported in February might be related arose as early as June. But the lack of a pattern--victims have been both male and female, and adult as well as juvenile--and a bedeviling inconsistency in victims’ descriptions of the assailant combined to hinder and delay.

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By the time the key evidence was in--that the same man had attacked twice on Nov. 3--Peloquin had already drawn on instinct and an exhaustive hand search of police reports to conclude that a single man may have been responsible for at least several attacks.

Peloquin notified all LAPD divisions Nov. 8, and a 10-officer group whose task was to catch the molester was on the streets the next day. When the delayed, but decisive report on the second attack finally arrived Nov. 9, the group grew to 30 officers.

“We had an outstanding opportunity to catch the suspect because we had now determined his mode of operation, the areas he was most likely to hit and we had exchanged information with police divisions surrounding West Valley,” Peloquin said.

The relentless criticism and the countless hours Peloquin has dedicated to the case have taken their toll on the 18-year Police Department veteran. In an interview this week at the West Valley station, he spoke candidly about the molester, the criticism and personal frustration that has plagued the investigation.

“I just don’t want it misunderstood that there was nobody I wanted protected more than the children,” said Peloquin, whose three children attend public schools in Ventura County. “We have been portrayed as the bad guys, when there really is only one bad guy--the man who attacked the children.

“This is a man who is not stupid. He stalks his victims before he attacks them.”

The detective described the molester as a “sneaky” and “driven” person who moves around a lot, wears different clothing during the attacks and sets up an escape route for himself. Out of all the attacks to date, there have been only two witnesses who have offered sketchy descriptions of the vehicle the molester drives.

“We realized he started out with a low-profile crime,” Peloquin said. “He was very sporadic, maybe striking once a month in different areas throughout the Valley, and then suddenly in the West Valley in a one-month period he committed a crime pattern.”

That unpredictability, along with lags in reporting both by victims and police, were among many factors that made it difficult for detectives to identify a pattern quickly, Peloquin said. Too few detectives each assigned to investigate heavy loads of complex cases with bare-bones resources may have added to the delay. Command-rank officers have said the investigation was flawed, principally in lack of coordination among different police divisions.

Victims offered different descriptions of the molester, and described different methods, Peloquin said. The victims themselves were both male and female, 7 to 22 years in age, white and Latina, and were attacked both on school days and weekends.

“It wasn’t just somebody who jumped out and said, ‘Here I am.’ Even when we knew what we were looking for, it was still difficult to find the cases,” Peloquin said. “There are so many differences, you get lost in them. There is no real rhyme or reason other than they occurred in the Valley.”

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With hindsight, Peloquin said one factor that set the molester apart from other sex offenders was his race. Police have identified the suspect as an African-American male, noting that there are far more white and Latino sex offenders.

Peloquin’s former partner noticed in June that three girls in four months had been attacked by a black suspect, but at that time detectives still were unable to discern a pattern.

When two boys were molested July 30 near their Canoga Park apartment, a composite sketch was drawn of their assailant, which was later shown to some of the victims in the earlier attacks. The girls, however, failed to identify the man.

But police used the composite drawing again this month after they determined they were after a serial molester. Detectives have shown the picture to witnesses and victims, some of whom have identified the man, Peloquin said.

A second composite based on incidents Oct. 26 and Nov. 3 failed to trigger recognition by other victims.

The possibility of more than one attacker remains open, Peloquin said.

Meanwhile, detectives arrested Robert McFadden, 40, of Van Nuys, Wednesday night in connection with another alleged child molestation, police said.

While details were not available, detectives said Thursday after questioning McFadden that he appeared to have no connection to the serial molestations.

“They’re still checking it out, though,” said Detective Dennis Tilton, as the task force would with any other child molesting arrest “anywhere in Los Angeles or even Southern California.”

“The task force is still going strong,” he added: “They have no indication to think that the perpetrator of those specific crimes is in custody.”

McFadden was being held on $50,000 bail on suspicion of molesting a Van Nuys boy.

Police went public with their investigation Nov. 15 after being forced--prematurely, according to Peloquin--by media pressure to do so.

“It it hadn’t been put out as quickly as it was, I feel our potential for arresting this man was a lot greater than it is now,” Peloquin said. “Detectives were trying to serve the public by getting this guy as quickly as possible.”

Many parents said they felt that their children were being put at risk and used as bait to catch the criminal.

Peloquin defended his tactics, saying the only way to make children safe is to arrest the molester.

The molester may benefit from the heavy media coverage, he said.

“This man will use it to his advantage to get around, to avoid arrest, to make himself harder to identify, to move out of the area or to change his mode of operation,” he said. “This person is going to continue to be a danger, only now we don’t know where to look for him.”

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For Peloquin, the fact that the undercover manhunt was blown before it succeeded is just one of several might-have-beens of the case.

What if any of the 10 earlier assaults got the attention the schoolgirl’s rape generated?

“Do I wish I had resources to look at every case with that much scrutiny? I do,” Peloquin said. “But I don’t, and it doesn’t look like it’s coming anytime soon.”

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Times staff writer Jonathan Gaw contributed to this report.