Man Questioned in Case of Missing Girl

VALLEJO, Calif. —  A 21-year-old man arrested in connection with a string of sex crimes may provide a lead in the Dec. 9 disappearance of Xiana Fairchild, police said Thursday.

William Perkins, who was arrested late Wednesday at a home in Benicia, stayed at the apartment of Xiana’s family the night before the 7-year-old Vallejo girl vanished on her way to school, police Lt. JoAnn West said.

Perkins was arrested on suspicion of various child molestation crimes that “came to light during the Xiana Fairchild investigation,” West said.

West would not elaborate.

Those charges, prosecutors said, are not related to the Xiana case.

Yet it remains unclear what role, if any, police believe Perkins may have played in Xiana’s disappearance.

According to court records, Perkins was called to testify Feb. 25 before a grand jury investigating the Xiana Fairchild case.

Perkins, who was being held in Solano County Jail in Fairfield, was arraigned in a Vallejo courtroom Thursday on charges involving two separate victims in four incidents between Nov. 13, 1998, and July 30, 1999, Solano County Deputy Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dennison said.

Perkins pleaded not guilty to all the charges: one felony count each of oral copulation and sodomy with a minor, possession of pornography depicting a minor, and a misdemeanor count of statutory rape. He also was charged with domestic battery in an unrelated case, Dennison said.

His preliminary hearing was set for Aug. 25.

Perkins’ arrest is the latest twist in a missing-girl case that has baffled authorities in this town about 30 miles northeast of San Francisco.

Xiana was last seen walking to catch a bus to school last December.

One night earlier, Perkins, who was friends with Xiana’ mother, Antoinette Robinson, and the mother’s boyfriend, Robert Turnbough, spent the night at the home. He left early in the morning, police said.

Authorities are investigating a possible link between the Xiana case and the abduction last week of an 8-year-old Vallejo girl.

Curtis Dean Anderson, a 39-year-old career criminal with a long history of abusing women and girls, is set to be arraigned today on molestation and kidnapping charges in connection with that case.

After getting out of prison in November, Anderson briefly drove a taxi for Vallejo City Cab, where Xiana’s mother had been a night driver and her boyfriend had worked as a mechanic.

Police said they didn’t initially consider Anderson a suspect in Xiana’s disappearance Dec. 9, although Anderson had lived in the area, driven a cab for the same company as Xiana’s mother and had just been released from prison.

In addition, Anderson was not a registered sex offender despite his sex-related offenses.

“We focused initially on high-risk registered sex offenders and moved on to examine all registered sex offenders in the area,” West said earlier. “If we had been aware of his background and the fact he was in Vallejo at the time, we would’ve looked at him. We didn’t have that information.”