Girl’s Alleged Attacker Gets Attention of Police in Utah

Utah police are looking at Kyle Joseph Borges, arrested this week in the abduction and rape of a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl, as a possible suspect in five recent sexual assaults on young girls in that state, officials said Thursday.

A law enforcement source said local police believe that Borges left Orange County in May--shortly after he was acquitted on charges of raping an Anaheim Hills woman--and went to Utah, where investigators think that he may have been involved in a series of rapes and burglaries.

Borges, 29, an occasional construction worker and transient who has a history of sexual abuse citations dating back to his days as a teen-ager in Orange County, has relatives in the St. George, Utah, area about 300 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City Detective Pat Smith, who is investigating several sex crimes, said of Borges: “He’s a subject. This is a guy we certainly want to take a look at. . . . We’re anxious to find out about him.”

Other, Similar Assaults

Smith said she has no other suspects in two sexual assaults that occurred in Salt Lake City in a period from May to July, one involving a 7-year-old girl, the other an 8-year-old girl. Both victims were abducted as they slept on the ground floor of their homes in quiet city neighborhoods. Both were taken away on foot by a man about 30 years old and were sexually assaulted.

Separate police agencies in the greater Salt Lake City area are investigating an unusual rash of at least three other, similar sexual assaults since May, all involving the abduction of girls age 13 or younger, according to Brian Jackson, a sex crimes detective with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department.

In the Huntington Beach case, Borges is suspected of having entered the gated Sea Cliff on the Greens community early Sunday and abducting a 12-year-old girl. The intruder allegedly took the girl in his truck to an open field, raped her and pushed her nude from the cab.

The attack came five months after Borges was acquitted by an Orange County Superior Court jury of breaking into an Anaheim Hills home in October, 1988, and raping a 46-year-old woman. Prosecutors said a genetic DNA test indicated to a virtual certainty that Borges was guilty. But they were not allow to present the evidence because the results arrived only after the trial was under way.

Salt Lake City Detective Smith said she became immediately interested in Borges on Thursday when she saw an interagency police communication from Orange County that described him as a suspect in the Huntington Beach rape.

Smith cautioned that “we don’t have enough information yet to know if it’s worth pursuing.” But she added that “this is more than we’ve had to work with so far.”

Smith said the composite drawing she had seen of the Huntington Beach suspect seemed to generally fit the description of the Utah assailant.

Borges’ family in Utah would not comment Thursday about his arrest. The mother, Doretta Borges, had told a reporter earlier: “Leave the family alone. . . . Have some compassion. Do you think that our heart is breaking or what?”

Lt. Ed McErlain of the Huntington Beach Police Department said Thursday of the Utah investigations: “I don’t know that anybody’s established that he’s responsible for any other cases in other cities. I know that he’s being looked at in other cases, but I can’t say anything further.” He described the review of Borges’ arrest by other departments as standard procedure.

First Court Appearance

Meanwhile Thursday, Borges made his first appearance in Municipal Court in the Huntington Beach rape case, but his arraignment was continued until Oct. 13 to give the public defender’s office more time to prepare to represent him. In the only other action on the case, Municipal Judge Marvin G. Weeks in Westminster rescinded Borges’ bail, which had been set at $1 million.

During the proceedings, Borges was hidden from public view, answering questions curtly through an open door and visible only to the judge and attorneys. Deputy Public Defender James Barnett said he feared that photos in the media of Borges might prejudice the case, which is said to rely heavily on physical descriptions of the suspect by several witnesses.

But Barnett made clear that whoever ends up defending Borges will probably hit upon the victim’s identification as a defense. Questioning the judgment and perception of a youthful observer, he said: “Typically, a small child is not as good a witness as a 30- or 40-year-old man or woman.”