Santa Ana : Girl, 16, Testifies Frank Molested Her at Age 4

A 16-year-old girl testified Wednesday that she was molested by Theodore Frank in 1974, five years before he was sentenced to die for the torture and murder of a 2-year-old Camarillo girl.

Frank, 51, is in the midst of a second penalty trial in Orange County Superior Court to determine whether he should die for the murder of Amy Sue Seitz, who was abducted from her grandmother’s Camarillo house and raped and tortured with vise-grips before being strangled.

He was convicted of the killing and sentenced to death in 1979, but last year the state Supreme Court reversed the decision and ordered a new penalty trial because evidence introduced in the earlier proceedings had been illegally seized by authorities.

The teen-ager told the jury that, after walking out of a Bakersfield market in 1974, Frank forced her into his car and drove her to an open field, where she was molested. The witness, who seemed to avoid looking at the bearded, bespectacled defendant, said Frank then drove her to an intersection and left her standing naked in the middle of the street.

After the molestation, Frank was sent to Atascadero State Hospital, from which he was released just weeks before the Seitz murder.

Testimony in the penalty trial is expected to last another month before the jury decides whether to sentence Frank to die in the gas chamber or serve a life term without the possibility of parole.