Kidnap Suspect Has Burglary Record : Crime: The man held in the abduction of a 12-year-old Lodi girl has spent several years in prison in Arizona, investigators say.

A man arrested in the kidnaping of a 12-year-old Lodi girl has spent much of the past decade in Arizona state prison on burglary convictions.

Police investigators have been working to connect suspect Steven Reece Cochran, 25, to a series of unsolved abductions in Northern California over the past few years.

Arizona prison officials say Cochran, who allegedly kidnaped 12-year-old Katie Romanek at knifepoint Saturday from her house in the Central Valley town of Lodi, has spent eight of the last nine years in prison on two burglary convictions and for parole violations.

“Except for a few months here and there, he’s been behind bars since October of 1986,” said Ron Mayes, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Corrections.

On Sunday afternoon, 22 hours after the abduction, Cochran was spotted walking near the Sierra foothills 26 miles southeast of Lodi. A few minutes later, the brown-haired, brown-eyed Katie, wearing only socks and streaked with mud but otherwise in good condition, emerged from a nearby clump of oak trees.

Until that moment, the kidnaping resembled the October, 1993, abduction of Polly Klaas, the 12-year-old Petaluma girl whose body was found two months later. Her death helped propel the “three strikes and you’re out” anti-crime measure enacted in March.

On Saturday afternoon, a bare-chested and heavily tattooed intruder calling himself Steve somehow entered the Romanek house in an upscale subdivision about 50 miles south of Sacramento, police said. Katie and a 12-year-old friend were under the supervision of Katie’s 16-year-old sister, Elizabeth. Their parents had left for a two-day visit to Michigan.

The stranger tied up the friend and sister, driving off with Katie in her sister’s car, police said. The car was later found about 25 miles southeast of Lodi apparently after it broke down and started a grass fire.

Cochran is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday on charges of kidnaping, sexual assault, unlawful detention and burglary. Authorities would not say which of the three girls may have been sexually abused.

Arizona authorities said Cochran has no history of kidnaping or sexual crimes. He served four years of a five-year burglary sentence and was released without supervision and parole three months ago.