Sexual assault trial ordered for Carder
JIM OKERBLOM
The San Diego Union-Tribune
A convicted child molester was ordered yesterday to stand trial in the sexual assault of Alicia Wade, whose father was charged with the crime before a genetic test cleared him.
Albert Carder Jr., who is in prison for molesting four girls in the same Navy housing complex where the Wades lived, was ordered by Municipal Judge Judith Hayes to stand trial on two counts of forcible child abuse and a third count of kidnapping in the May 8, 1989, attack on Alicia. The trial is to begin Sept. 28.
Carder, 28, faces a maximum sentence of 15 years to life in prison for each of the child-abuse counts, which could be added to a 25-year sentence he is already serving, said prosecutor Robert Eichler.
Carder's appointed attorney, Barton Sheela, said the case had already received enormous publicity and declined comment.
At the time of the assaults, Carder, an admitted methamphetamine abuser, was on probation as a registered sex offender for molesting two girls in San Luis Obispo.
After she was assaulted, Alicia, then 8, told investigators that a man took her out a bedroom window to a car and assaulted her.
Authorities nonetheless focused on her father, and Alicia was removed from her home and placed in foster care.
In June, 1990, after 13 months of therapy, Alicia changed her story. She testified at her father's preliminary hearing that he attacked her, and she was put up for adoption.
In August 1991, with both the trial and Alicia's adoption moving forward, semen stains that had been overlooked were discovered on Alicia's nightgown. Tests excluded the father and pointed to Carder. Alicia was returned home in November 1991 after 2 1/2 years away from her family.
During the two-day preliminary hearing, Eichler called three witnesses.
San Diego police detective Renee Hill described how Alicia, in an interview at Children's Hospital, told her that a man had come into the bedroom and carried her out to his car, hurt her, threatened to kill her and brought her back. Hill said the girl gave a detailed description of her attacker, including his height, the color of his hair, a pimple on his lip, his red-striped shirt and his green car -- "like my grandfather's."
Dr. Patricia Dunklee, a pediatrician, said Alicia had been raped and sodomized and described extensive injuries the girl received that required surgery.
Robin Cotton, a laboratory director for Cellmark Diagnostics in Maryland, testified DNA testing of sperm found on Alicia's nightshirt matched Carder's DNA. She said the chance of someone else having the same DNA characteristics was about 1 in 3 million.
Carder, 28, faces a maximum sentence of 15 years to life in prison for each of the child-abuse counts, which could be added to a 25-year sentence he is already serving, said prosecutor Robert Eichler.
Carder has an extensive history of sexual assaults. He was given a 17-year prison sentence in 1989 for molesting four girls, ages 7 to 10, in Alicia Wade's Navy housing complex in Serra Mesa between February and May of that year. In at least two of those cases he entered through a bedroom window.
In September 1990, while serving a prison term, he was sentenced to an additional 8 years after pleading guilty to a 1989 attack on a 4-year-old girl in another Navy housing complex. Five days after Alicia Wade was attacked, the girl was kidnapped through a bedroom window, sexually assaulted and returned to a phone booth near her home.
On Monday, Alicia Wade, now 13, returned to San Diego with her mother from the family's home in rural Missouri, but she was not called to testify and was not in court. She is expected to be a prosecution witness at Carder's trial.
The Wade case was the subject of a 1992 county grand jury report that severely criticized how various agencies handled it.
In a civil suit, Jim Wade won a $3.7 million settlement from numerous defendants, including the county. Many believe the case contributed to the defeat of District Attorney Edwin Miller in the June primary election.