Police Crack Molester's Code

A man who authorities say could be the nation's most prolific child molester was crafting a lengthy memoir about his sexual exploits with boys when he was arrested, police said.

Authorities also said they have cracked "99 percent" of the detailed code that Dean Schwartzmiller used in notebooks he kept, apparently to chronicle crimes both real and imagined.

Schwartzmiller was arrested in May after investigators said they discovered notebooks with 36,700 handwritten entries of boys' names, descriptions of their anatomy and codes for suspected sex acts.

The notebook entries, apparently coded for each boy's anatomy and personality, are being entered into a spreadsheet. Police have not said how many victims those entries represent. Many items are duplications and some may describe Schwartzmiller's fantasies.

San Jose Police Lt. Scott Cornfield said investigators seized a memoir that Schwartzmiller had been writing about his exploits with boys. Typed out, the manuscript is about an inch-and-a-half thick.

In Schwartzmiller's words, "every boy was beautiful and every one wanted him," Cornfield said.

Schwartzmiller is being held without bail on one count of aggravated sexual assault on a child under 14 and six counts of lewd and lascivious conduct on a child under 14 involving two 12-year-old cousins. He faces two life sentences if convicted.

Schwartzmiller is not talking to police and apparently has not been very forthcoming with his public defender, either. His lawyer, Melinda Hall, said she still knows very little about the case and is not getting much information from her client.

"I've learned more from the newspaper," she said.

Prosecutor Steve Fein will not discuss how many alleged victims authorities have heard from, or whether any of the reports might result in additional charges against Schwartzmiller.

But as investigators follow up on hundreds of phone tips from around the country, they say they are confident Schwartzmiller will not go free again, as he has in the past despite at least three molestation convictions and a dozen arrests across over three decades.

"This time we've got him," Cornfield said. "This guy's not going anywhere."
Police also said they confiscated CDs, DVDs and videotapes, including child pornography, as well as computer servers and hard drives, which are being evaluated by specialists at the FBI's Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory in Menlo Park.

Investigators say Schwartzmiller, who went by a variety of aliases and earned a living doing stucco work, repeatedly avoided trials and got out of jail or prison early. Despite his lengthy criminal record, he was not required to register as a sex offender.

It was a minor traffic accident on May 17 that brought Schwartzmiller to the attention of San Jose police. According to police, Schwartzmiller appeared ready to exchange information until the other driver suggested contacting the police.

That's when Schwartzmiller fled.

Police tracked down his address and went to his home but he was not there. However, they spoke to his roommate and former prison buddy, Fred Everts, 34.

Suspicious, they checked Everts' background and found that he had two previous molestation convictions and arrested him on an outstanding warrant for a parole violation in Oregon.

Meanwhile, Schwartzmiller heard about Everts' arrest and quickly fled to Washington state.

From there, he called one of the boys he is accused of molesting and asked him to go to his house to "remove and destroy paperwork, CDs, computer drives and other items," a police report shows.

The boy and his siblings decided to tell their mother, who went to police with evidence, including a CD containing photos of her semi-naked son. Schwartzmiller was arrested two days later by Snohomish County, Wash., sheriff's deputies in Everett. He was extradited June 7.

Schwartzmiller may not be talking, but Everts, who has been charged with molesting one of the same San Jose boys, is apparently eager for a deal with prosecutors.

Everts has met with police at least seven times, helping to put together a case against his roommate, according to his public defender, David Hultgren. Everts, too, faces life in prison if convicted under California's "three strikes" law.

"He's freaked out about the whole thing, understandably so," Hultgren said. "I said, 'Look, he wants to help.' I said, 'Fred wants to cooperate."'