Pacific Beach rapist’s ‘elder parole’ hearing postponed – NBC 7 San Diego

San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan opposes his release.

“The Elder Parole law, which allows early release for murderers and rapists, is cruel to crime victims and is rigged to benefit only violent criminals,” District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement. “Our lifer unit will never abandon victims and we will continue to move forward.” I will stand with them in these early parole hearings and vow to fight against releases when warranted, as we have in this serial rape case do.”

Bogard was sentenced to 96 years in prison in 1995 for 37 serious crimes, including burglary, assault, sexual assault, forced oral sex rape and several other crimes. He is being held at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad.

Convicted rapist Kenneth Bogard has a parole hearing on Wednesday. NBC 7’s Omari Fleming spoke with one of his survivors who is outraged about his possible early release.

If he is denied parole, the Board of Parole Hearings will not schedule another parole hearing for at least three years. If he is granted parole, he will not be released immediately. The governor also has the right to send the case back for further review.

The prosecutor’s office said Bogard – then a 36-year-old singer in a local party band – sometimes stalked women for weeks before attacking them in their Pacific Beach homes. He used a knife to coerce his victims and wore a ski mask to disguise himself, prosecutors said. He was known to put his victims to bed after the attacks and say goodnight to them.

Kim Caldwell survived one of the attacks in August 1993 and was scheduled to read a victim’s statement at her parole hearing on Wednesday.

She was relieved when he was finally convicted in 1995, but she felt that relief was destroyed by the possibility of parole. Caldwell was so concerned that the former flight attendant traveled from her current out-of-state home back to Pacific Beach to attend a virtual parole hearing on Wednesday, where she spoke with NBC 7.

“Kim, Kim, wake up,” Caldwell whispered, remembering. “I turned around and saw every woman’s worst nightmare: a giant knife with a serrated edge and a ski mask.”

During the attack, Caldwell said, her attacker talked to her as if she were his girlfriend.

“He told me he loved me,” Caldwell said. “He talked and talked and talked and talked like we were in a relationship, so it was ten times scarier to me.”

When it was over, she said he put her to bed.

In the days that followed, Caldwell, then 32, said she got a gun and went hunting for her attacker on the streets of Pacific Beach, where she encountered police officers investigating her case.

“They gave me a lecture. I said, ‘Listen. If this happened to you, you would hunt him down and kill him. I’m just trying to find him. That’s all, and then I’ll call you.'”

Caldwell was never able to find the sex offender, but the police were. Using DNA evidence, she was able to link Kenneth Bogard to the crime.