Trial Starts in Maiming of Girl With Acid : Liquid Poured to Protect Identity After Rape Try, Prosecutor Says

Jack Oscar King poured a liter of sulfuric acid over 16-year-old Cheryl Bess last October after trying to rape her because he feared she would identify him to authorities, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

In opening statements at King’s trial here, San Bernardino County Deputy Dist. Atty. Dwight Moore said King tried to “choke the life” out of the teen-ager with his thumbs after driving her to a remote desert region off Interstate 15 and unsuccessfully trying to rape her.

But after Cheryl struggled to “bash him with a rock,” Moore said, King emptied a liter bottle of corrosive drain cleaner over her, “kicked her into a bush, then walked away . . . but she didn’t die.”

The terribly disfigured Cheryl instead wandered in the desert for several hours, “in incredible pain,” Moore said, until she was rescued.

Cheryl, who now lives in Orange, is undergoing skin graft surgery to rebuild her face at UCI Medical Center. She is expected to testify early next week.

Moore, in his opening statement, said, “We don’t have a case without her.” He said that she lived to tell paramedics and investigators that her assailant was a black “maintenance worker” at the Waterman Gardens housing project in San Bernardino, where she and her mother lived until shortly after the attack. Moore said that Cheryl told paramedics and investigators she was abducted in a white van that had a brown stripe.

About four hours after a worker at the nearby California Aqueduct discovered her, Moore told the jury, San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies stopped a van matching the description given by Cheryl and arrested King.

“Her ears are gone, her nose is gone, her hair is gone,” the prosecutor told jurors, many of whom wiped away tears. “She’s functionally blind because her eyelids were destroyed. The doctors are trying to rebuild her face but . . . Cheryl’s ordeal has only just begun.”

King, 65, has been charged with attempted murder, kidnap, assault with a caustic chemical, assault with a deadly weapon (sulfuric acid), assault with intent to commit rape, mayhem, attempted rape and forcible oral copulation.

A former painter employed by the San Bernardino County Housing Authority, King has remained at the San Bernardino County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail since his arrest the night of the attack, Oct. 24. He served a 16-year state prison sentence for a 1961 unsuccessful rape attempt on a 3-year-old Irvine girl.

If convicted of each felony count in this trial, Moore said, King could be sentenced to a maximum of “about 32 years” in prison.

King’s attorney, William Dole, of the San Bernardino County public defender’s office, also made brief opening statements in the trial. Dole said that authorities had arrested the wrong man and that “that man (the real culprit) is still out in the community.”

Man Had Goatee

Dole told jurors that Cheryl claimed her attacker was wearing coveralls and had a goatee and mustache, neither of which King had.

“The evidence should show that there is a man working for the housing authority with a goatee, black, in his 50s,” Dole said, allowing for a long pause. “It’s not Mr. King. It’s going to take some time (to prove), but Mr. King is not the man who took Cheryl Bess out to the desert.”

Dole said that except for the fact that King is black and was a maintenance worker at the housing project, Cheryl’s description of her attacker doesn’t match that of King.

Moore, in his statement to the jury, told of the events that led to the acid attack. He said that shortly after dawn on Oct. 24, Cheryl accepted an offer for a ride to school from a man she recognized as a maintenance worker at her housing project. Moore said Cheryl had accepted a ride to school from the same maintenance worker--in the same white van with the brown stripe--the week before. There had been no approaches in that previous instance, Moore said. Moore asserted that the maintenance worker was King.

Girl Terrified

When King steered the van in the wrong direction to San Bernardino High School, Cheryl asked about it and King told her he had to go by his home because he forgot to shut off the lights, Moore told the jury. When King arrived at his house, King held a screwdriver against Cheryl’s neck and ordered her into the home, Moore said.

But Cheryl became terrified and refused to enter the house, Moore told the jurors, and King subsequently pushed the girl back into the van and drove her into the desert.

During the drive, Moore said, King ordered Cheryl to be quiet and threatened her by showing her a bottle of commercial drain cleaner. “ . . . He showed her the bottle with the label reading ‘Poison’ and said he’d pour it on her if she didn’t shut up,” Moore told the jury.

Moore said that King told Cheryl the strong cleaner would “make her face swell up and her hair fall out.” Moore said King drove Cheryl to an area of the high desert south of Hesperia, let her off in the bushes and told her to take her pants off.

Choking Attempt Alleged

Moore said that King then tried to rape her, but failed, and then forced her to perform oral copulation. According to Moore, King then started to worry that “she’d turn him in” and then tried to choke her to death.

Cheryl resisted, Moore said, and then “she felt something like water on her face.” But it was not water, Moore noted, it was the acidic drain cleaner.

A man walking his dog in the area where the attack took place later told authorities he saw a van fitting that description parked along the side of the road about 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 24, Moore said. By 8:30 or 9 a.m., Moore said, the witness noted that the van was gone.

Cheryl wandered in the area after her attack for more than five hours, Moore said. About 2 p.m. Cheryl appeared in front of a California Aqueduct employee, Moore said, and the man put her in his truck and drove her into Hesperia.

King Arrested Later in Day

Paramedics arrived, Moore said, and began rinsing her face with a saline solution. “The acid (as it dripped off her face) . . . blistered the paint (of the pickup truck),” Moore said.

Moore said that King was arrested while he was driving his van about 6 p.m. Oct. 24 in downtown San Bernardino. Moore said evidence will show that the tire tracks in the desert at the site of the assault match the tires on King’s van. Moore also said that in a search of King’s home, made with a search warrant, painter pants were found with sulfuric acid stains on the cuffs.

Both Moore and Dole said they expect the trial to last about two weeks. Dole said he expects to present his defense sometime next week after the prosecutor completes his presentation.