The Man That Many Sought : Crime: Officials in several states are savoring the capture of alleged child molester Richard E. Howard.

Five years ago, on the eve of his child molestation trial, Richard E. Howard boarded a Washington state ferry and disappeared.

Sometime during the one-hour trip across Puget Sound, officials say, Howard bid goodby to his dog and his car and vanished. His mother called it a suicide--her son had been despondent about the charges he faced, she said. But when the Coast Guard found no body, investigators were less sure.

“We thought it was a ruse,” said Dan Clem, a prosecuting attorney in Kitsap County, Wash., where Howard had allegedly molested two girls, ages 7 and 9, in 1986. “There was nothing to indicate he was dead.”

Last week, at a hearing in San Diego County Municipal Court, prosecutors said they have ugly proof that Clem was right. Armed with three videotapes they say Howard made of young girls he molested here in 1990 and 1991, they have accused the 46-year-old drifter of 268 counts of child molestation and child pornography--a county record.

Howard, who served 14 months in a Washington state prison for fondling a girl in 1969, is being held in San Diego’s downtown jail on $5-million bail. All of Howard’s 11 purported victims are girls, ages 3 to 12. If convicted, Howard could be sentenced to nearly 500 years in prison.

Already, Deputy Dist. Atty. John Williams has amended his complaint three times, taking it from 110 counts, to 162, to 200 and most recently to 268.

“At this point, to continue to amend the complaint would give us nothing but a wheelbarrow full of files,” he said last week.

But the case continues to grow. At Friday’s hearing, two investigators testified that the heavy-set Howard--at 5-foot-10, he weighs more than 300 pounds--had assaulted four other girls, and prosecutors reserved the right to add dozens more counts to their complaint.

As he awaits trial in California, law enforcement officials in three other states are trying to determine if Howard has stalked children in their jurisdictions as well.

San Diego County investigators are still piecing together the route Howard traveled after his disappearance. But interviews with Howard and items found in his possession have led them to believe that he spent time in Louisiana, New Mexico and Arizona before coming to California.

Had it not been for a 10-year-old San Diego County girl who told her mother about Howard this April, officials say he might still be on the run. According to the mother’s testimony last week, her daughter was attending a birthday party at a park in Chula Vista, when Howard approached her and offered to store her candy in his car.

Howard, who called himself Bob Barret Holder, took hold of the girl’s hand and led her to his vehicle, the mother testified, where he showed the girl a pornographic magazine and described a sexual dream he said he had had about her.

Minutes later, when told of the incident, the mother called the police. When they arrived, Howard was still in the park. He offered them a New Mexico driver’s license that identified him as Holder, not Howard. A computer check quickly told them that his California license in the same name had been suspended.

A combination of luck and hard work led investigators to discover Howard’s true identity. First, Chula Vista detectives received a call from a Washington state woman who had seen a newspaper photo of the man they believed to be Holder. She said she recognized him as the missing Howard.

Then, while searching the defendant’s car, Chula Vista police Detective Scott Young discovered a copy of a New Orleans birth certificate for Bob Barret Holder. It showed that he was born in 1949--four years later than Howard.

With the help of New Orleans police, Young learned that the real Holder had died in 1952, at the age of 2 1/2 years. FBI fingerprint analysis confirmed it: the man in custody was definitely Howard.

Albert Bradley, Howard’s court-appointed attorney, refused last week to comment on his client’s assumed identity. As of yet, Howard has not acknowledged his true identity.

Investigators believe Howard obtained the copy of the birth certificate in New Orleans on Sept. 8, 1987. They are working with New Orleans police to determine if there are any victims there, but so far those inquiries have turned up nothing.

“A lot of pedophiles we have come in contact with, they know no boundaries,” said Sgt. Marlin Defillo of the New Orleans Police Department. “So we’re covering all the bases.”

San Diego County investigators are also cooperating with law enforcement officials in Las Cruces, N.M. They have provided police there with a videotape they now believe was filmed in New Mexico. Like the other videotapes found among Howard’s personal belongings, it depicts him engaging in sexual activity with a girl younger than 14 years old, officials said.

In testimony this week, Young, the Chula Vista detective, said Howard himself had told him about some illegal activities in other states. During an interview he conducted after Howard was in custody, Young said, Howard told him that, as he drove from New Mexico through Arizona, he had videotaped a girl named Rebecca.

“He believed she was 8 years old,” Young said.

Young testified that Howard also told him that, during his 1 1/2-year relationship with two Chula Vista youngsters, one of the girls would often tell him she didn’t like his fondling.

“He would say to her, ‘If you didn’t want to have sex with me,’ he would find somebody else,” Young testified. “He would tell them he didn’t want to do this to them any more. And they would say, ‘Well, then don’t do it.’ And he said, ‘You don’t understand. This is something I do.’ ”

That was not news to Patrolman Dan Scott, the lead investigating officer in the 1986 Washington case that Howard evaded. That complaint originated in Bremerton, at a health club where Howard was known to frequent the Sunday “Family Swim” nights. While adults sat nearby, Scott said, Howard would ply the children with toys and plastic jewelry.

“Then he would touch the little girls,” Scott said. “He would throw them up in the air like a great uncle; then he would cop a feel here and there.”

Howard was charged with one count of first-degree statutory rape and another count of indecent liberties. Had he been convicted of those charges, he could have been sentenced to life in prison.

At the time, Scott recalls, he heard from other law enforcement officials around the state who were overjoyed to hear Howard was in custody.

“One guy had chased Howard around the Yakima County area extensively. He wanted Howard really bad,” Scott said. “When he found out that we had him, he offered to take me on a hunting trip.”

Five years later, Sgt. Mike Amos of the Yakima Police Department still remembers making that offer. Amos had arrested Howard before--once for urinating in the dressing room of a Yakima clothing store. But what he really wanted, he never got: enough evidence to charge Howard with child molestation.

For eight months in 1984, Amos remembers, he worked with six girls whose parents believed they had been abused by Howard. But the girls wouldn’t describe what had happened.

“He had them pretty well petrified to the point where they would not talk,” he said. “There were definitely threats there. Either harm to them or a family member or a family pet. We just couldn’t get enough to get him charged.”

So, in 1986, when the Bremerton investigators called, Amos was elated. And recently, when he heard that Howard was in custody in San Diego, Amos felt that feeling again.

“Oh, the lives he has ruined. He’s definitely a predator,” Amos said last week, recalling that around the time he was tracking him, Howard was convicted of a misdemeanor for showing a girl obscene pictures. “I just hope he does get some time for all those hours I put in trying to get him. That sounds kind of vindictive, and you’re right, it is.”

Scott, of the Bremerton Police Department, had similarly strong feelings, even after all these years. When Howard disappeared, Scott said, he hoped a body would be found just so he could go and look at it.

“That’s how much I disliked him. I normally don’t take a personal interest in these cases. But guys like this, it turns a little personal,” he said. “He was totally unscrupulous. Absolutely possessed with the desire to have little children.”

In San Diego County, Howard is alleged to have cultivated his victims at places where children commonly congregate. Among the 268 counts, some are alleged to have taken place outside YMCA gymnastics practices, swap meets, a Boys and Girls Club and even at a baptism ceremony and a first Communion celebration.

Few of the charges involve force.

“He looks more towards the manipulative,” Williams, the prosecutor, said last week.

During his preliminary hearing last week, Howard sobbed uncontrollably as Williams presented evidence about still more alleged abuse. His head down, with his fists jammed into his eyes, Howard’s huge body shook. At one point he gasped, “Oh, God!”

Apart from the pending charges, the hearing also revealed details about Howard’s past in San Diego County. At one point, Young described an incident for which Howard was never arrested or charged: he was at a Chula Vista pool in 1989, teaching girls to swim between his legs.

When Young asked Howard about the incident during their interview, Young said, “He indicated he did remember, and that he was probably working up to molesting those girls.”

Clem, the prosecuting attorney in Washington state, said, “This guy can’t stop. It’s a disease. It’s like alcoholism. It’s compulsive.”

In Kitsap County, Wash., there is still a warrant out for Howard’s arrest. It was issued five years ago, when a judge who disbelieved that Howard was dead revoked his $5,000 bail--money that Howard’s ailing mother had guaranteed.

Clem says he is keeping a close watch on the California case. He hasn’t yet decided, he said, whether to go to the trouble and expense of finally putting Howard on trial in Washington.

“If he goes to prison forever down there, I don’t know what value it is to prosecute,” he said. “We don’t want him ever to be in a position to molest other kids. If he can go away forever down there, I don’t know what value it would be to bring him back. The guy’s only got one life to live, not counting the afterlife, and that’s not going to be very pleasant.”

But Amos, the Yakima police sergeant, felt differently.

“If I could come up with something here, I would take him back just so I could say, ‘I finally got you, Dick. It’s time for you to go bye-bye,’ ” he said, pausing to reflect on the fateful ferry trip in 1986 that took Howard away. “If he had fallen over, that would have been the best thing for him. He would have been crab bait.”