Diego Olmos Alcalde, the accused killer of University of Colorado student Susannah Chase, spent six months in a Denver jail after being arrested for attempted rape in another case shortly after Chase’s death.
Alcalde pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of possessing a concealed weapon after the woman he attacked in his car said she would “prefer not to go to trial,” said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the Denver district attorney’s office.
“Sometimes we can accommodate victim’s wishes. She preferred a resolution that required her not to testify at trial.”
During the attack on Jan. 16, 1998, Alcalde allegedly held a knife to the woman’s throat, reached under her blouse for her breasts and told her that he would do whatever he wanted to her. The incident took place less than a month after Chase was killed in Boulder. The woman told police he gave up the assault when she fought back, screaming and kicking the car door.
Police found the knife under the Datsun’s front seat.
Unlawfully having a concealed weapon carries a sentence of up to 12 months. But because Alcalde had already served more than six months when he pleaded guilty on June 26, 1998, Judge Nancy Rice cqsentenced him to time served, Kimbrough said.
The arrest near Downing Street and Colfax Avenue was Alcalde’s second bust in Denver for sexual assault in the weeks after Chase’s murder. Chase, 23, was found close to death in a Boulder alleynear her apartment in on Dec. 21, 1997. Her skull was fractured in four places by blows from a baseball bat and she She died the next day.
On Jan. 1, 1998, Denver police arrested Alcalde after a woman accused him of raping her at knifepoint. Prosecutors determined there was no likelihood of conviction in that case, Kimbrough said. Police are seeking parts from a 1979 Datsun 280Z that Alcalde was driving at the time of Chase’s murder. The car was sold at auction in March, 1998, and crushed by an Englewood salvage company.
The business, Colorado Auto & Parts at 2151 cqRadcliff Ave., may have sold parts from the vehicle before the car was destroyed.
Anyone who purchased interior parts from a 1979 Datsun 280Z from the auto salvage yard is asked to call Boulder police Det. Fred Patterson at (303) 441-3330. cq
Alcalde, who was arrested last Saturday near his mother’s Aurora home, was also arrested in 1995 in Union City New Jersey after he grabbed a woman’s buttocks on one of the city’s main thoroughfares.
“She screamed at the time and an officer within earshot of her responded and was able to apprehend him and placed him under arrest,” said Union City Police Chief Charles Everett.
Alcalde failed to appear at a Union City Municipal Court hearing after he was arrested in the Feb. 18, 1995 incident.
Alcalde, who was living in West New York, a New Jersey town just north of Union City, at the time, was released on $2,500 bail and the charge modified from criminal sexual contact to simple assault. The case remains open, Everett said.
