Convicted Molester Held on 39 Charges : Investigation: The suspect is accused of assaulting a Garden Grove boy, then 8, while still on parole in 1989.

A convicted child molester has been arrested on 39 counts of molesting a Garden Grove boy after a family friend saw the man profiled on a recent television program featuring true-life stories of convicted felons now on the streets.

Robert Edwin Martin, 40, was arrested at his workplace in Las Vegas by investigators with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. The suspect is a video repairman who lived in an unincorporated area of Orange for three years before moving to Las Vegas last March.

Sheriff’s officials said Wednesday that Martin was still on parole in 1989 when he began to molest the boy, then only 8 years old. Martin and the boy’s mother had been friends for the last three years, said Lt. Richard J. Olson, a sheriff’s spokesman.

Investigators in Las Vegas were looking into allegations that Martin molested a child in Nevada and sheriff’s investigators here were checking reports that the suspect molested at least one other Orange County boy. They are asking other victims to come forward. “As active as he was in this area, we believe that there may be other victims,” Olson said.

Detectives began their investigation into the case involving the Garden Grove boy after a family friend told the boy’s mother about seeing Martin on a Home Box Office special called “Convicts on the Street.” Martin, who received an eight-year sentence after he was found guilty of child molestation in 1984, gave HBO permission to include him in the program, Olson said.

The mother later reported to Garden Grove police that her son had been molested. The matter was referred to the Sheriff’s Department because Martin had lived in an unincorporated area under the sheriff’s jurisdiction when the alleged molestations occurred. Investigators say they believe the boy was molested from May, 1989, to May, 1992.

Orange County sheriff’s investigators and officers from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police arrested Martin on June 23 and later obtained a warrant to search his apartment. Investigators seized “several items of evidence” that will assist both law enforcement agencies, Olson said. He declined to elaborate, but The Times learned that several homemade pornographic movies were among the seized items.

Martin was extradited to California a week ago to face 37 counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14, and two counts of child molestation by someone with a prior conviction. He was being held in Orange County Jail in lieu of $25,000 bail. He will be arraigned in Central Municipal Court in Santa Ana on July 17.

Checks with the California Department of Corrections revealed that Martin was sentenced to eight years in prison in October, 1984, after he was convicted of molesting a child in San Luis Obispo County. He moved to Orange County shortly after being paroled from the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi in August, 1988.