Arrest Relieves Residents of O.C. Areas Where Sex Crimes Took Place

ORANGE —  A 32-year-old woman had three encounters with a man police believe committed more than 80 burglaries and sex crimes--including 15 rapes--in Orange County. The third proved fateful for the suspect.

In July of 1994, the woman and police said, Kenneth G. Wade walked through the unlocked gate of her Cottonwood Street condo clad only in a towel and with hair soaking wet, as if he had just gotten out of a swimming pool.

Then he dropped the towel.

The woman ran upstairs to call the police and the man ran away.

A month ago, she saw the same man again. He was bolting from a neighbor’s garage, this time fully dressed. Her neighbor hadn’t seen him, but her purse was missing. Police said they later found the purse in a trash bin in Temecula, where Wade lives and operates a pool hall.

Then on July 24 the man appeared a third time: She saw him stroll past as she sat watching TV in her living room about 4:30 p.m. They looked at each other, and he walked on.

“I got up to see where he was going,” she said, “and he took a really sharp turn” toward the back gate she had padlocked after the first incident. As she ran to her phone less than 15 feet away, the intruder was trying to get through her gate, she said.

Her husband chased him to a parking lot a short distance away, wrote down his license plate number and turned it over to police, who arrested Wade the next day. He is being held without bail at the Orange County Jail.

The 32-year-old woman asked not be identified for safety reasons. Police confirmed her account on Wednesday.

Other residents of the complex of two-story attached homes said the “Cottonwood Pervert,” as they referred to the man who exposed himself to residents, would look for open gates and doors permitting entry into houses set off from the street.

“The first time I saw him I didn’t know if I should call 911. I didn’t know if it is an emergency,” said the woman who allegedly spotted Wade three times. She called the Orange Police Department’s non-emergency line, and an officer was dispatched.

About six months ago an Orange officer came to a Neighborhood Watch meeting and said police were trying to link the man who was exposing himself in their complex to a rape in Anaheim.

When she called police July 24, they “took a more aggressive approach,” the woman said. Two officers were at her house within 20 minutes.

“I have been very fearful for a year and a half,” she said. “Even though I heard he was caught, I keep looking over my shoulder when I take out the garbage. It was scary, he seemed to know who was home.”

“This community works well together,” said Dan Culver, 17. “They put up flyers and people walked around spreading the word about him.”

Wade is alleged to have also frequented the Shady Lane and Tennessean condominium complexes in Santa Ana, where police say he raped a woman at knifepoint last August and exposed himself on numerous occasions. Residents said that on one occasion, Wade appeared naked in a resident’s back yard and jumped over a wall as the resident chased him.

Shady Lane resident Jenny Windham said she has lived in fear since a woman was raped at the complex last August by a man who came into her home through an open window.

“Sure, people are worried. I’m worried myself,” said Windham, who was robbed in her home by two men shortly after the rape. “This is a nice place to live, but the whole thing makes me leery. Even now that he’s caught, I’m still going to watch myself.”

Sheila Rendell-Baker, president of the Tennessean Homeowners Assn., has been afraid to walk alone around the complex at night.

“Of course I’m relieved,” she said. “Because from my understanding, I could’ve easily been a victim. I’m a single woman in my 40s and my roommate is a woman in her 20s. I used to always feel I could go out in the evenings and walk around, but I don’t really feel like doing that anymore.”