BOULDER — A spokesman for the family of alleged killer Diego Olmos Alcalde said Thursday that they plan to hire a new attorney and ask that the case be moved to another state.
Family members also believe that Chilean immigrant Alcalde, 39, is a scapegoat, said Miguel Morales, a Los Angeles-based correspondent for El Mercurio de Valparaiso and Radio Marti in Chile, who said he is acting as their spokesman. “They took an immigrant who they thought would not fight. True, he has a criminal background, but as far as murder, they don’t believe it.”
Alcalde is accused of bludgeoning Susannah Chase, 23, with a baseball bat and leaving her to die in an alley a block from her Boulder home Dec. 21, 1997.
“They have a perfect right to have those positions and to consult with a lawyer and consult with his present attorneys,” said Carolyn French, a spokeswoman for the Boulder County district attorney’s office.
Police arrested Alcalde in January after the Colorado Bureau of Investigation alerted them that a DNA sample in the FBI’s database matched DNA found on Chase’s body. Morales said Alcalde didn’t know the University of Colorado at Boulder student and doesn’t know how the DNA got on her body.
“They are not accusing anybody of fabricating evidence,” Morales said. But Boulder authorities are smarting from their failure to solve the JonBenet Ramsey case and plan to prosecute Alcalde to repair their image, he said.
Alcalde, who was a teen when he came to the United States after his mother married an American, has a record of assaulting women.
Morales said Alcalde can’t get a fair trial in Boulder and family members are hiring an attorney. They will ask that the trial be moved, probably to Nevada or New Mexico, he said.
Craig Silverman, former deputy chief district attorney in Denver, said Thursday that the chances of a judge granting a move to a different state were “zero, nix, never going to happen.”
Alcalde appeared in court Thursday and sat quietly as Judge James Klein postponed an arraignment to Sept. 4.
