3rd Man Held in Bat Attack on Migrants : Crime: New suspect is husband of woman who alleged that she was raped in Alpine.

The husband of a woman whose purported rape prompted a vigilante baseball bat attack on an Alpine migrant encampment was arrested and will be charged with assault with a deadly weapon, authorities said Tuesday.

Dan Stout, 35, was arrested Monday in El Cajon, where he and his family moved after the Oct. 1 bat attack, Sheriff’s Department spokesman Dan Greenblat said.

The assault, which left three migrants seriously injured, was a planned hate crime, which could increase Stout’s sentence if he is convicted, Greenblat said. Stout was also charged with battery leading to serious bodily injury, he said.

The arrest of Stout--who witnesses said had, along with several friends, threatened migrants during the week before the bat attack--brings the number of men in custody to three. Sheriff’s investigators are still looking for at least two other men, sources said.

Stout showed up at the creekbed encampment Sept. 25 and said he was going to “bust some heads” because his wife had been raped by “Mexicans” the night before.

On Oct. 1, six to eight Anglo men wielding baseball bats stampeded through the camp, seriously injuring two Mexicans and a Guatemalan. None of the three migrants had anything to do with the purported rape, investigators said.

Sheriff Jim Roache announced last week that no charges will be filed in connection with the alleged rape of Stout’s wife.

While she insisted she had been raped by one of three men who had pulled her into some bushes, potential suspects and witnesses interviewed in the United States and Mexico said she shared beers with the men and had consensual sex with several men.

Stout, who is scheduled to be arraigned today, is on probation for two prior convictions--one for spousal abuse in April and one for battery in 1990, court records indicate. He is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail, Deputy Dist. Atty. Luis Aragon said.

On Oct. 15, 26-year-old Ronald Aishman of Spring Valley was taken into custody in connection with the bat attack. Aragon said bail for Aishman, who has a criminal record for burglary, has been set at $200,000.

Last Thursday, 28-year-old Charles Edward Nocita of El Cajon was arrested and faces the same charges. Nocita, who was being held in lieu of $200,000 bail, has served time in jail for “sale or transportation of a destructive device,” Aragon said.

Aragon said a criminal complaint in connection with the bat assault has been filed against another man, Ronald Inman, 22, of El Cajon. Inman is not yet in custody.

The alleged rape and bat attack heightened tensions in Alpine over the presence of the camp used by migrants--many of them Mexicali residents who return to their families on weekends.

Tensions were further heightened in the wake of the bat attack when a woman walked into an Alpine tavern on Oct. 15 and claimed she had been raped by “three Mexicans.”

When deputies arrived to interview her, she changed her story, saying her assailant had been a lone Anglo.

The Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday that an investigation has revealed that no rape occurred in that incident either. The woman, who is described as mentally unstable, fell down an embankment before walking into the tavern in a disheveled state and reporting the rape, witnesses said.

Other witnesses interviewed accounted for her presence during the time she said the rape occurred, Greenblat said.

According to a source in the Sheriff’s Department, the same woman filed a false rape report in May that showed “some of the same inconsistencies as the Alpine case.”