Features

Vallejo man found guilty of kidnapping 8-year-old girl

The Associated Press
Thursday May 03, 2001

VALLEJO — Curtis Dean Anderson was found guilty Wednesday of kidnapping and sexually assaulting an 8-year-old Vallejo girl who testified that Anderson forced her to drink alcohol before he assaulted her last August. 

Jurors found Anderson, 40, guilty on all the counts he faced – kidnapping and 10 sex-related charges. He could face life in prison when he is sentenced July 12. 

“I hope he does himself a favor and hangs himself in jail,” the girl’s mother said after the verdict was read. 

The girl, whose name is not being used because of the nature of the crime, claimed Anderson kidnapped her on her way home from school last summer, and kept her locked inside his car for 44 hours while he repeatedly sexually assaulted her. 

The girl testified in person last week, and jurors were shown a videotaped interview with the girl made shortly after her escape. 

She said Anderson made her drink alcohol that made her feel “dizzy.” She said he told her to French kiss him, but she didn’t know what he meant. 

She also said on the tape that he made her take off her clothes so he could touch her. She said she lost count of how many times he touched her, and that he was acting mean, wasn’t talking much and was breathing heavily. 

Prosecutor Donna Stashyn pointed a finger at Anderson during her closing argument and called him a “perverse predator” who tortured the third grader. 

Anderson’s lawyer, Carl Spieckerman, asked jurors not to assume the young victim was telling the truth and pointed to a lack of fingerprints or other evidence. 

After the verdict, Spieckerman said he knew after seeing the videotape that Anderson was going to be convicted. 

“Everybody knew it was going to be a bad verdict and he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison,” he said. “There were some things that you knew happened, so there was never any question they would convict him of a lot of stuff and that was going to add up to a lot of years.” 

On Tuesday, Judge Allan P. Carter dismissed the jury foreman after an off-duty police officer reported to the prosecutor that the man had talked about the case. 

The foreman had been exercising at a health club when he told friends he had been appointed foreman and that the trial “had become a zoo,” the (Fairfield) Daily Republic reported. 

The officer is married to a district attorney investigator who has spent the past several months working closely with the young girl’s family. 

“He violated the admonition about talking about the case,” Defense attorney Carl Spieckerman said. “He didn’t say anything bad or improper, it was just the fact that he did discuss the case with someone outside the jury. That’s what the rules are, and we’ve got to stick pretty close to them.” 

The Solano County jury, made up of five women and seven men, deliberated for about two hours Monday, then for about another hour Tuesday before the foreman was dismissed. 

 

An alternate juror, also a man, was called to the courthouse and deliberations began again from scratch. That alternate juror sat in the courtroom during the entire trial and heard the case.