The “Pacific Beach Rapist” is facing early “age probation”

He pushed her awake and whispered her name.

Kim Caldwell turned around and found a man wearing a ski mask in her bed. He had a very large knife. He knew her name. He dragged her around by her ponytail and while he raped her he talked like she was his girlfriend. As he left, he pulled the blanket up around her and tucked her back into bed.

Caldwell was furious. She bought a gun and drove for hours through backyards to catch the serial rapist. She pressured San Diego police investigators and released her name to the public to stop him.

For well over a year in the early 1990s, the attacker known as the “Pacific Beach Rapist” terrorized the community, breaking into homes and sexually assaulting seven women. For some he woke up while they were sleeping.

San Diego police warned that he combed homes and waited to enter when his target was alone – and even did so with one victim who had five roommates. Neighbors gathered for meetings and formed walking patrols. One woman said she had recurring nightmares because she lived near a victim and decided to move.

Kenneth Bogard, photographed in front of San Diego Municipal Court on July 15, 1994.

(John McCutchen/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

When police arrested a suspect, his identity was a surprise: 36-year-old Kenneth Bogard, the face of popular local party band Dr. Chico’s Island Sounds.

A San Diego Superior Court jury convicted Bogard of rape and other charges. At his trial in 1995, Bogard blamed his behavior on him being a “sex addict.” Caldwell, now the key player in the case, watched as a judge sentenced Bogard to 96 years and eight months in prison. And with that she was done with him.

“Done. We did it. He’s gone. He’s not coming out. I was done. I moved on with my life,” Caldwell remembers.

It should not be. The fight to reduce the population of California’s overcrowded prisons eventually led the state to institute what is known as “elderly parole.” In its most recent version, it is available to incarcerated individuals who are over 50 years old and have served at least 20 years of their sentence.

Bogard – who has served 29 years, less than a third of his original sentence – qualifies. The now 66-year-old had his first hearing in 2019, but probation officers rejected his application and set the next hearing for five years. That hearing is Wednesday.

Kim Caldwell rented an apartment in Pacific Beach for her upcoming parole hearing.

(Ana Ramirez/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Caldwell, 63, will attend the hearing via video; Most parole hearings have been conducted this way since the pandemic. She could log in from her home out of state, but instead she rented an apartment in Pacific Beach to be back in the area where it happened. She wants Bogard to see the sea over her shoulder.

“I thought I was going to die”

Helen Toma is seen sitting next to Caldwell in the video. Toma, now 57, was a 26-year-old student who had just returned home from one of her three part-time jobs when she was attacked.

She remembers waking up on a Monday night and seeing a man in her hallway wearing only a ski mask and red Converse shoes.

“It was May 10, 1993,” she said. “And I remember once thinking I was going to die. …And I remember looking at the clock at 10:27 p.m., I’ll never forget that. Never.”

Toma, who had asked to use her maiden name, moved out of her backyard house on Oliver Street the next day. It turned out that she and Caldwell lived on the same street.

The “Pacific Beach Rapist” wore a ski mask when he attacked most of the seven victims from August 1992 to October 1993, opting for a Zorro-style mask the last time. A month later he returned to the first victim, wearing massage oil and saying he wanted to “treat” her, but she scared him off.

He usually entered through an open door or window. He told some of the women that he had been watching them and explained where they had been. Sometimes he called her by name.

Caldwell, who worked for an airline, was attacked in August 1993. The then 32-year-old wanted to go public with her story, warn women and put pressure on law enforcement. She forced neighbors to open their meetings to the media. She also spoke to the Union-Tribune, which, like most media outlets, generally does not publish the name of a sex crime victim without their consent. Caldwell insisted that her name be used or an interview would not be granted. She wanted to challenge the idea that this was somehow her fault.

“Why am I hiding? I did not do it. I was sleeping in my bed,” Caldwell said in an interview last month.

Toma struggled to move forward. She didn’t want anyone to know and was embarrassed to see Caldwell on TV. “I was really mad at her.” She later felt the need to speak out and recently decided she wanted to publish her photo to further her efforts to keep Bogard in prison.

“I’m not afraid to show my face anymore,” she said. “It’s not about me. It’s about letting other people know about it.”

Helen Toma, who uses her maiden name, decided to go public with her experience for the first time ahead of her upcoming parole hearing.

(Ana Ramirez/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The use of DNA in court was in its infancy in the early 1990s, but it linked the crimes to Bogard, who had already been arrested for making videos up women’s skirts and for masturbating in public, including, when two college students saw him standing naked outside their window.

Several victims of the “Pacific Beach Rapist” remembered these red Converse sneakers. Jurors saw Bogard appear in a promotional video for Dr. Chico wore a pair.

“It’s just annoying”

Toma said she knew Bogard wouldn’t be eligible for parole until the early 2040s, and when she received a letter in 2019 informing her of an upcoming parole hearing, it was “a complete shock.”

Caldwell said she collapsed on her bed when she got the call in 2019.

“I was just cruising through my life. I was done (with him).” She said the notification changed her world “like an inverted pyramid spun around its top.”

She attended the hearing via speakerphone. Although he was denied release, she is frustrated that he could face a parole board again every three or five years.

“I just don’t even know – I’m really speechless because it’s just infuriating,” Caldwell said.

In 2014, a panel of three federal judges tasked with forcing California to reduce overcrowded prisons ordered the state to consider parole for people 60 and older who have at least 25 years of their sentence had served a prison sentence. Bogard soon became eligible and had his first parole hearing at age 61.

In 2021, state law was changed to expand eligibility requirements to inmates age 50 or older who had served 20 years of their sentence. The list of those whose crimes exclude them from consideration is relatively small and includes those facing the death penalty, those serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, or those who have murdered a police officer.

According to the state’s Board of Parole Hearings, nearly 8,300 people attended a parole hearing last year. About 3,400 of them — 42 percent — qualified based on elder parole.

A hearing is not a guarantee of release. Last year, two-thirds of those who were eligible for senior parole and had a hearing were not granted release. The year before, three quarters of older candidates were rejected at their hearings.

“A very, very scary man”

Assistant District Attorney John Cross said he could not speak to the details of Bogard’s case ahead of the upcoming hearing. Transcripts from Bogard’s hearing five years ago show that now-retired Assistant District Attorney Richard Sachs pleaded with hearing officers to keep Bogard in custody.

“You don’t go into someone’s house with a knife and force them to have sex because you’re a sex addict and you’re looking for a greater thrill,” Sachs argued. “You do that because you’re a mentally disturbed criminal.”

“This man is a very, very scary man,” Sachs said. “He is a sexual psychopath.”

Kenneth Bogard, December 15, 2011

(California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)

The name of Bogard’s current attorney was not available. Five years ago, the lawyer representing Bogard acknowledged that her client could never change the fact that he had committed “atrocious crimes,” but said he could change what happens today and tomorrow.

At the 2019 hearing, she said Bogard’s standardized assessment found he was a “moderate risk,” that he had behaved well in prison and that he had found religion.

Bogard told hearing officers he spoke gently to the women and thought at the time of the assaults that he “wasn’t really that bad of a guy.” I’m a nice guy even though I did that.”

“My brain wasn’t thinking properly,” he said.

Bogard, who is housed in a prison in the Salinas Valley, apologized to several people, but also to San Diego as a whole, “for spreading fear throughout much of the city.”

The two hearing officers rejected his request for parole on the grounds that he posed a disproportionate risk to society or a threat to public safety.

They said he could get another parole hearing in five years. A few years later, Bogard requested an earlier hearing. His application was rejected.