Freed Serial Molester Moves to Wash. State

A serial child molester freed in Orange County last week from a life sentence has resurfaced in Washington state, where authorities say he once cruised for victims -- and where he will be required to register as a serious sex offender deemed likely to repeat his crimes.

Edward Harvey Stokes, who once said to a therapist that he had molested more than 200 victims and felt like a monster, applied for a new Washington driver’s license using a Vancouver address three days after his April 7 release from the Orange County Jail, according to sheriff’s officials in King County, Wash.

In a letter he sent to members of his defense team in the fall, Stokes had promised he would waste little time getting back to his home state.

He wrote the letter after learning that he had successfully appealed the life sentence imposed after he was convicted in California of molesting Blue Karak, a 16-year-old runaway he had met in Seattle. Stokes’ release came several months later, after the California Supreme Court declined to consider overturning the appellate ruling.

In the letter, provided Thursday to The Times by a former member of his legal team, Stokes derided California as un-American and alleged that officials had hidden a key police report.

The belated disclosure of that report, which surfaced after Karak committed suicide, led the state 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana to overturn his conviction in the fall. The court found that Stokes was denied his constitutional right to cross-examine his accuser.

Letter From Prison

“If all goes well, I will be far from California.... No more CDC [California Department of Corrections], Orange County Superior Court or ‘Third World Nation of California,’ as I will be returning to the real world of the United States where the United States Constitution still holds meaning,” he wrote Dec. 1 in a two-page letter from Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, Calif.

The letter was provided by Andrew Exler, a longtime activist for inmates who is best known for getting Disneyland’s ban on same-sex dancing overturned in the 1980s. Exler, who now legally goes by the single name Crusader, worked as a court-appointed paralegal when Stokes was representing himself in 1998. He said he had a falling out with Stokes over what he considered endless demands, and asked the judge to be removed from the case. Stokes eventually came into an inheritance and hired private attorneys.

In the letter, Stokes, who has been convicted several times of molesting young boys, also promised that he would live a productive life.

“I am being given another chance, and I do hope to use it to further my education and learn to blend into the community without further incidents,” he wrote. “The court has given me my life back, and I do plan on using it to the best of purposes this day and every day from this point on.”

Authorities in the Pacific Northwest, where Stokes molested young boys for the better part of three decades, aren’t so sure. Even his sister, who lives in the Seattle area and is one of her brother’s harshest critics, believes he will strike again. Susan Stokes has been aggressively spreading the news of his release to newspapers and television stations and alerting every youth shelter she can find.

King County sheriff’s officials said they would ask Stokes to register as a Class 3 sex offender, a designation reserved for those deemed most likely to repeat their offenses. He must register within 30 days of establishing permanent residency. In this case, the clock started Saturday, the day Stokes got his driver’s license, said Sgt. John Urquhart, spokesman for the King County sheriff’s office.

“There’s been a tremendous amount of news coverage up here: front-page stories in the newspapers and headlines on TV,” Urquhart said. “I think that’s a good thing. The public needs to know this guy is in the Puget Sound area.”

Stokes targeted runaways or troublemakers because they typically did not report his crimes. He often gave his victims alcohol and drugs so they were less inclined to fight his sexual advances. Some victims reported waking up in handcuffs and leg shackles.

Police and court records say Stokes was first arrested in 1974 and has been convicted at least five times in Washington and Oregon of rape, sodomy and kidnapping. In July 1995, he completed a three-year sentence in Oregon for sex abuse and sodomy.

An Aggravated Case

Stokes was sentenced in the Orange County case in 2001 under California’s “one strike” sexual assault law, which allows for a life term in aggravated cases.

According to trial testimony, he met Karak in 1996, days after Stokes had been arrested in King County for a parole violation and released on $25,000 bail. Stokes lured Karak to California by promising he would pay for the trip. The two checked into the Little Boy Blue Motel in Anaheim, where, Karak said, he was forced to drink tequila and take LSD until he submitted to Stokes’ sexual advances.

Karak told police that even though Stokes took him to Disneyland, the attacks continued until he ran from the motel and went to police.

Before trial, the court agreed to a special hearing at which Karak’s testimony was collected because the boy was often difficult to find and had indicated he planned to leave the state. Defense attorneys were allowed to cross-examine Karak during this proceeding, but repeatedly opposed the procedure, saying Stokes should have the right to confront any accusers at trial.

Nearly a year after that hearing, prosecutors disclosed a supplemental 83-page report by a detective in the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department that contained statements inconsistent with Karak’s testimony. The defense never had the chance to question Karak about those inconsistencies because he killed himself several months before trial. Still, the trial judge allowed the testimony to be entered as evidence.

The appeals court reversed the conviction in November, and Stokes was released shortly after the state Supreme Court recently refused to review it.

In the letter to his legal team, Stokes said that Karak chose to be his “lover” and that the court’s decision was a “proper end” to his conviction, which he said was “based upon the testimony of a drug-induced fantasy.”

“The truth will never be known as the truth was never told in any report that had been released to the defense,” Stokes wrote. “And I will never testify regarding this matter or repeat it to others -- it will have to remain a mystery.”