Warrant Is Issued for Sex Offender

Less than two weeks after being released from a life sentence in Orange County, a repeat sex offender is being sought by Washington state police who say he applied for a driver’s license using a phony address.

Edward Harvey Stokes, 48 -- who once told a therapist he had molested more than 200 people -- is the object of a felony arrest warrant issued late Thursday alleging that he committed perjury and forgery by using a friend’s old address on an April 10 driver’s license application in Vancouver, Wash.

Authorities are concerned, said Sgt. John Urquhart, a spokesman for the King County Sheriff’s Department, “because we don’t know where he is. He could be in another state.” King County is where Seattle is located.

Authorities obtained the warrant after going to the Vancouver address on Stokes’ application and being told by the occupants that they didn’t know him. The address may be one formerly used by the serial sex offender as a mail drop, a sheriff’s spokesman said.

William Kopeny, Stokes’ lead attorney in the successful appeal of his Orange County conviction, said Friday that, “on first blush, it seems like it might be a case of selective prosecution.”

Kopeny said he had never heard of an Orange County case in which felony charges were sought for getting a driver’s license using an incorrect address. On the other hand, he said, he is unfamiliar with Washington law and doesn’t know if there are other reasons his former client is being sought.

Stokes is believed to have returned to his native Washington -- where authorities say he once cruised for victims -- almost immediately after his April 7 release in Orange County.

That release came after the California Supreme Court declined to consider a November decision by an appeals court that overturned his 2001 conviction for drugging and sexually assaulting a 16-year-old runaway he’d met in Seattle.

The court ruled that Stokes had been denied his constitutional right to confront his accuser, Blue Karak, who committed suicide several months before trial.

After getting the driver’s license April 10, authorities said, Stokes went to the Seattle-area community of Tukwila, where he applied for Costco membership. His last known whereabouts were in Portland, Ore., where he went to pick up paperwork that friends had been holding for him, said Sheriff’s Det. Sgt. Dave Trimble of Clark County, which includes Vancouver. After that, Trimble said, Stokes dropped from sight.

“Unfortunately, he came to Washington, where he has no duty to register [as a sex offender] for 30 days,” Trimble said. “That’s a long time.”

The charges of which Stokes is accused, Trimble added, carry bail of $5,000.