[CreepingDeth]

SAN FRANCISCO - Despite being arrested at least nine times for molesting boys, Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller managed to avoid lengthy prison terms, coach youth football, move in with another convicted sex offender — and be named by authorities as one of the most prolific child molesters in history.

Schwartzmiller's criminal record began 35 years ago, but he never registered as a sex offender and spent just 12 years in prison. In his time on the outside, police suspect he molested children as many as 36,000 times in several states, Mexico and Brazil.

Wily, charismatic and "smarter than heck," is how James Kevan, one of his defense lawyers in the mid-1970s, described Schwartzmiller on Friday. "He could write up legal documents better than most lawyers."

Often defending himself in court, Schwartzmiller got two of his four convictions overturned, even though the Idaho Supreme Court called him a repeat offender who "uses his intelligence to take advantage of the weak and oppressed and those who are in need."

With Schwartzmiller, 63, being held without bail on charges involving two San Jose boys, police and the FBI are trying to retrace his movements over the last 30 years.

A search of Schwartzmiller's San Jose home turned up spiral-bound notebooks with notes on more than 36,000 encounters with children, in categories such as "Blond Boys," "Cute Boys" and "Boys who say no" — together with codes appearing to indicate how he abused them, San Jose Police Lt. Scott Cornfield said.

Messages left for Schwartzmiller's public defender last week were not returned.

In court records released Friday, authorities said Schwartzmiller lived for five years with another convicted sex offender whom he met in jail — Freddie Everts, 34. The pair allegedly lured boys to their home with gifts including skateboards, video games and a motor bike.

Everts said Schwartzmiller claimed to be dying from an undisclosed illness and was keeping notes on his "encounters with boys" for a manuscript, according to court records. Everts is in jail on charges he failed to register as a sex offender.

Kevan — the former attorney who was later disbarred — after having drug problems, he says — said he knew Schwartzmiller as Tim Miller, one of his dozen or so aliases, when they both lived in Mountain Home, Idaho, a small town near the Sawtooth Mountains.

When they first met, Schwartzmiller was coaching a youth football team. "I helped him coach," Kevan said. "The parents all thought he was great. No one suspected a thing."

In retrospect, there were signs something was wrong — like the time he took the team to a game in Boise, and they "stopped in the desert to do a jock strap check." Kevan said he was not on the bus at the time, and only later realized that Schwartzmiller may have been picking out potential victims.

By that point, Schwartzmiller had already been convicted of molesting boys. His record appears to date back to 1970, when he was convicted in Alaska of lewd and lascivious conduct with three teen boys. He was sentenced to two years' probation, then indicted again two years later for molesting another boy — but he apparently fled the state before he could be tried.

Over the years, Schwartzmiller was convicted of molestation charges at least four times, but was acquitted once and avoided prosecution on other charges. When he first came to authorities' attention, there were no Megan's Laws or three-strikes laws, and Americans were less aware of the ramifications and the severity of child sexual abuse.

He called on Kevan for help when he was facing trial in Idaho in the 1970s on charges he molested two 13-year-old boys.

"I said, 'You've got to tell me what's going on.' He told me everything," Kevan said — outlining a history of molesting boys from Alaska down the West Coast.

Even then, Schwartzmiller had been keeping notebooks of his victims, with "a couple hundred" boys' names, followed by numbers that described each boy's anatomy, Kevan said.

"The investigators didn't know what they meant. They didn't even take them," Kevan said. "I told him to get rid of them."

Mountain Home Police Capt. Dave Pursell, who was on the force at the time, said he had no information about the notebooks. But he remembers Schwartzmiller well.

"He brought several suits against the sheriff here, and against the state and against anybody and everybody. In Idaho statutes there's a lot of case law related to Mr. Schwartzmiller."

Schwartzmiller spent about two years in prison on the Idaho charges before he appealed his conviction to the Idaho Supreme Court and won in 1978. The following year two 14-year-old boys said he molested them and he fled again — this time to Oregon, where he was arrested again, accused of bringing a boy from Little Rock, Ark., to San Francisco in June 1980. Authorities said Schwartzmiller had forced the boy into prostitution.

But the U.S. Attorney's office deferred prosecution to authorities in Idaho, where he served another six years in prison for molesting boys. By that time, Kevan had been disbarred, so he hired another attorney, Lance Churchill, who now works for a real estate company in Boise.

"He was famous as one of the best prison lawyers in Idaho," Churchill said. "He was respected because if an inmate needed help in a legal case, he would help them out. If he saw an injustice he would try to help the inmate. He was pretty well-liked out there."

In the years after Schwartzmiller was set free in 1987, he was arrested at least four more times for abusing children. He served three more years in Oregon, got out, was repeatedly arrested for violating parole and allegedly abusing other children, won an acquittal in Washington state, and fled rather than face arrest on another warrant in Oregon.

Joan Cavagnaro, the deputy prosecutor who tried the Washington case, said she had no doubt about Schwartzmiller's guilt, though she had no evidence like that found in the notebooks. Child abuse cases can be difficult to prosecute, Cavagnaro said, particularly when suspects target victims from troubled homes.

"Touching does not leave physical evidence," she said. "So you have one person's word against another and in the context of chaotic, dysfunctional family settings, this makes it a very difficult crime to prove."

Bastard.

[ManOfSteal]

Repulsive.

[Kerrigan]

Originally Posted by CreepingDeth

Bastard.

This guy is giving Michael Jackson a run for his money.

[CreepingDeth]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan

This guy is giving Michael Jackson a run for his money.

If this was a Dean Schwartzmiller v. Jackson poll, then Dean would have won easy. Jackson is just more suspicious and more famous.

[macamac]

Any skyscrapers being built? When do they pour the footings?

Edit: I may have posted this in the wrong thread. Or maybe I didn't.

[Hugi]

How is this even possible? Let's say the man really took his molesting seriously and spent 10 minutes on each boy, 20 days a month, 8 hours a day.
36.000 boys * 10 min each / 60 / 8 / 20 = 37,5 months, roughly 3 years. And that's not even counting his daily coffe breaks and summer vacations in Taiwan.

This must be fake.

[brapper]

Originally Posted by Hugi

How is this even possible? Let's say the man really took his molesting seriously and spent 10 minutes on each boy, 20 days a month, 8 hours a day.
36.000 boys * 10 min each / 60 / 8 / 20 = 37,5 months, roughly 3 years. And that's not even counting his daily coffe breaks and summer vacations in Taiwan.

This must be fake.

we can only hope that's the case.

[JoshuaZ]

Super crazy

[Zimphire]

And he isn't even a priest!

[macamac]

Did you have to make that remark? Really stupid.

[Athens]

Originally Posted by Zimphire

And he isn't even a priest!

[d.fine]

[Goldfinger]

Originally Posted by Zimphire

And he isn't even a priest!

This proves that the story is a fake.

[Mithras]

I think he's a really nice guy who's merely misunderstood.
Cody will back me up on this.

[RobOnTheCape]

Doing a google on the guys names leads to many reports about the guy, thus most likely not a hoax. Can only hope that like Father Geoghan, convicted here in Boston, that someone in prison will get hold of this guy in prison, and viciously beat, torture and then finally kill him. That eliminates possibility of parole, victims thinking he's alive in the world somewhere, and this guy clogging our system with his legal bullsh*t.

Can only hope.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Hugi

How is this even possible? Let's say the man really took his molesting seriously and spent 10 minutes on each boy, 20 days a month, 8 hours a day.
36.000 boys * 10 min each / 60 / 8 / 20 = 37,5 months, roughly 3 years. And that's not even counting his daily coffe breaks and summer vacations in Taiwan.

This must be fake.

Keep in mind, he started 35 years ago. Assuming that he didn't molest any while in prison due to lack of access, we drop the number to 23 years. That's 1,565 per year, or 30 per week: four per day for 23 years.

Still disturbingly prolific, but (at least theoretically) doable. Also, we don't know that he molested 36,000 different people; more likely, most of his victims were molested several times each. Given that the guy seems to have known how to put himself in positions which would allow him access to young boys, this isn't impossible. Throw in a few marathon sessions to make up for time off moving and laying low, and you have something disturbingly possible. Only the most depraved of humanity could ever come close to something on this scale, but this guy seems to (at least potentially) fit the description.

[Hugi]

Blech. It's abominable.

[nredman]

i think everyone he abused should get to kick him in the nuts 100 times.
once he gets into jail he is the one who is going to get abused, and he will deserve it

[Hawkeye_a]

4 a day !!!!! crazy ! I mean you hear of cases where 1 or 2 or maybe a few more are molested, and thats a huge deal...the media goes into a frenzy over it. And here you have a creature whos molested 36,000 !!!!!!!! Foget the media...where the hell have law enforcement and councellors been ? what the hell have they been doing for 35 years ?!?!!? He might be shrewd to evade jail time and punishment, but how on earth can he get away so many times ?

Either the laws where he lived didnt accomodate for his sickness, or it just dosent add up.

Also by 'molest' what exactly are we talking about ? are we talking physical contact ? or just anything 'inappropriate'. That football team thing.....when he got the boys off the bus to examine the jock straps or whatever....would that could as molestation ?

Yeaaach..... For some reason the media is all over stories of this nature(sex offencers). I wonder has this been going on throughout history on this scale(in proportion to population) or is this a more recent defect of society ..... and i wonder what causes it.

[CreepingDeth]

Originally Posted by nredman

i think everyone he abused should get to kick him in the nuts 100 times.
once he gets into jail he is the one who is going to get abused, and he will deserve it

This guy will buy the prison bitch.

[historylme]

Don't look like a fake to me.

[Mithras]

I don't think Goldfinger was saying the story was fake, and for the record I wasn't suggesting he's a kindly but misunderstood man, either. Just light-hearted jokes about a serial child molester who deserves to rot in hell if there is one; you know, typical Lounge fare.

[CreepingDeth]

Since he's in California, it doesn't look like he's going to have a 100% chance of rotting in prison.
Let's hope he did a few in Texas or somewhere like that. They'll look him up. I'm not sure of the process, but I think they try him in each state where he committed a crime. I wonder how many years he'd get in total.

What's the most years of punishment ever dealt to someone?

[historylme]

Originally Posted by Mithras

I don't think Goldfinger was saying the story was fake, and for the record I wasn't suggesting he's a kindly but misunderstood man, either. Just light-hearted jokes about a serial child molester who deserves to rot in hell if there is one; you know, typical Lounge fare.

It was before my coffee, I'm now reading things better.

[Mithras]

Originally Posted by CreepingDeth

What's the most years of punishment ever dealt to someone?

For time actually served, I found this story about Paul Geidel, who (by this Wikipedia entry) was imprisoned for second-degree murder in 1911, and released in 1980. (!! )

As for sentences, this page of uncertain reliability mentions a sentence of 7,109 for two fraudsters in Iran in 1969. The longest sentence requested by the prosecution was 384,912 years for a negligent postman in Spain.

[Zimphire]

Originally Posted by macamac

Did you have to make that remark?

Yes, yes I did. It wasn't even supposed to be a joke. There was a point made there.
I noticed some people didn't even get it.

[DeathToWindows]

I heard about this on NPR and nearly threw up.

Gaah... send him to Bubba!