Suspect Released in Mix-Up Arrested on Rape Charge

A Baldwin Park man is back in custody after a paper-work snafu allowed him to be released from jail Wednesday and allegedly rape an 18-year-old housekeeper upon returning to the same Seal Beach home he was accused of burglarizing a week before.

Ernie Madrid, 19, was rearrested by Baldwin Park police and turned over to Seal Beach police Thursday afternoon, authorities said.

Madrid had allegedly confessed his first break-in of the Seal Beach home to Police Detective Darrell Hardin last Friday. Hardin thought he had until Wednesday to finish transcribing the interview tape, Police Chief Bill Stearns said.

But the detective apparently didn’t realize that a new judicial policy cut the inmate holding time from 72 to 36 working hours for arraignment, the hearing in which a defendant is formally charged.

When Madrid appeared for arraignment in Westminster Municipal Court on Tuesday, the transcript of his Monday night confession to Hardin was unavailable to prosecutors, and the hearing could not be postponed. So charges were dismissed.

Stearns said that on that day, Hardin had been meeting with prosecutors in Santa Ana on an unrelated murder case.

“As far as he knew, he had until the next day to finish his paper work,” Stearns said.

The district attorney’s office had to drop the charges against Madrid, and he was released early Wednesday. Later in the morning, an intruder broke into the same house Madrid had been accused of burglarizing.

The housekeeper, making beds, was confronted by a man who had grabbed a kitchen knife. She was beaten, raped and sodomized, police said.

Madrid surrendered to Baldwin Park police officers early Thursday when he heard they were looking for him, Stearns said. He was held in the Orange County Jail on $50,000 bail after being booked for investigation of rape, auto theft and receiving stolen property.

Stearns said that even if Madrid had been charged Tuesday, it was likely that he would not have been held in jail because of overcrowding.

“We’re not clairvoyant,” Stearns said. “We had no reason to think this guy had violent tendencies.”

Hardin said he did not transcribe Madrid’s statement because he had already worked a 14-hour day Monday. He said he knew Madrid’s arraignment was scheduled for Tuesday morning, but “we couldn’t get the paper work done, and the D.A. kicked it out. We just didn’t have time.”

Madrid was originally arrested April 13, a few hours after the Seal Beach home had been broken into. El Monte police, who made that arrest, said Madrid was driving a $20,000 Porsche that had been reported stolen from the home.

The housekeeper attacked Wednesday is a Long Beach resident. She was treated at Los Alamitos Medical Center and released to her family, police said.