The man held in the rape and murder of Susannah Chase was arrested for grabbing a New Jersey woman’s buttocks when he lived in that state in 1995.
Diego Olmos Alcalde, now in custody for the 1997 Boulder killing, failed to appear at a Union City Municipal Court hearing after he was arrested in the Feb. 18, 1995 incident, said Union City Police Chief Charles Everett.”She screamed at the time and an officer within earshot of her responded and was able to apprehend him and placed him under arrest.”
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.
Boulder and Aurora police arrested Alcalde at a skate park near his mother’s Aurora home on Saturday.
He is charged with raping and beating Chase, 23, with a baseball bat on Dec. 21, 1997, near her Boulder home. She suffered multiple skull fractures and died the next day.
Alcalde, 38, was arrested twice in Denver on sexual assault charges only weeks after Chase’s death.
A DNA sample submitted to a national DNA database by Wyoming’s crime lab after he was incarcerated for attempted kidnapping of a woman in that sate led Colorado authorities to him.
Tom McGhee: (303)954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
