This is an archive of a past election

The color photo of PUSD supe Percy Clark and John Whitaker-Betances which accompanies the piece online was released in response to a second public records act request.....

No word yet from Portland public schools regarding my PRA request regarding *their* DADS program, coincidentally (?) begun in the summer of 2003..

Btw, more on Mr. Whitaker can be found at list member (and list lurker) Peyton Walcott's blog http://www.peytonwolcott.com/Whitaker-BetancesPUSD.html .

And stay up to the minute as to the charges against Mr. Whitaker by visiting the Orange County Sheriff's Department's webpage on him http://www.ocsd.org/InmateInfo/ViewInmateData.asp?BookingNumber=2231105 .

According to the Orange County District Attorney's office http://www.orangecountyda.com/docs/casemanagementlist.pdf , accused murderer, convicted child sex offender, and flamboyant fraud John Whitaker is moving closer to a trial date, having had a preliminary hearing earlier this week and a pretrial hearing set for August 31 at 8:30 am.

Mr. Whitaker is reportedly accused of murdering two women here in Southern California - one, an Orange County prostitute; the other, a clerk for the Santa Monica public schools. Both murders were "cold" cases to which Mr. Whitaker has reportedly been tied by DNA evidence.

After release from state prison for a sex offense, Mr. Whitaker settled in Pasadena, and posing as a military hero http://pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies205.htm , he impressed many in town as quite a man.

He so impressed PUSD then-supe (currently supe-on-terminal-leave) Percy Clark that Mr. Clark put Mr. Whitaker in charge of the district's "Dads Are Doing Something" program, supposedly without ever doing a background check.

Had Mr. Clark checked the state's Megan's Law website http://meganslaw.ca.gov/ , he would have learned many disturbing things about Mr. Whitaker.

But Mr. Clark apparently didn't bother, and Mr. Whitaker came to our schools.

It's my understanding that because of the multiple murder allegations, Mr. Whitaker may face the death penalty.

Btw, if you believe Mr. Whitaker, the flamboyant fraud and convicted child sex offender, I've got a nice bridge for sale...

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02/05/2009

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/i_did_not_kill_anybody/6884/

Pasadena Weekly

'I did not kill anybody'

Accused double-murderer John Laurence Whitaker calls the Weekly to proclaim his innocence

By André Coleman 02/05/2009

In a telephone interview from jail last week, former Pasadena schools volunteer and accused double murderer John Laurence Whitaker proclaimed his innocence.

Saying there has been a “rush to judgment,” Whitaker, who went by the name of John Whitaker-Betances when he lived in Pasadena from 1997 to 2004, said flatly, “I did not kill anybody.”

Saying “90 percent of the facts” related to his case “are just coming out,” Whitaker said, “Trust me; they are making a big mistake.”

Whitaker has been held without bail in the Harbor Justice Center jail in Newport Beach since 2004, soon after he was arrested in Oregon, where he failed to register as a sex offender. Whitaker was wanted at the time by Orange County homicide investigators, who had linked his DNA profile to the unsolved 1983 strangling of Patricia Ann Carpenter, a prostitute, in Laguna Niguel. Whitaker was also linked though DNA evidence to another strangulation — that of Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District clerk Bodil Rasmussen in 1975 in Santa Monica.

It was also learned around that time in 2004 that Whitaker, who passed himself off as a decorated Vietnam War veteran, was really a convicted sex offender who had spent three years in prison in New York in the 1970s for raping a 14-year-old boy, and then after that 10 more years in a California prison for raping a girl of the same age.

In Thursday’s interview — conducted the day that a story appeared about his next court hearing on March 23, marking Whitaker’s 17th pretrial appearance since his arrest more than four years ago — Whitaker said he has a strong case for innocence.

“It’s not going to be the duck-shoot they thought it would be,” Whitaker said. “It’s not going to be like shooting fish in a bucket.”

Without providing specifics, Whitaker’s public defender, Lewis Clapp, maintains that Whitaker was having drinks with doctors at the time Rasmussen was being raped and murdered.

In testimony in Oregon in fall 2004, Whitaker stated that he left California for New York City the day before Carpenter was killed. Authorities from Orange County maintain that skin particles found under Carpenter’s fingernails contained Whitaker’s DNA, and witnesses say they saw her with Whitaker hours before she was killed.

Soon after being released from his second rape sentence, Whitaker moved to Pasadena, where he developed the smooth-talking Whitaker-Betances persona, in which he wore a military beret and medal-bedecked Army fatigues. He once regaled listeners at Pasadena City College, where he ran for a seat on the college board of trustees, with stories of escaping a Viet Cong POW camp by chewing through a guard’s neck.

The Army has no service record for anyone using his Social Security number.

In 2001, working closely with local school officials, Whitaker started the DADS (Dads Are Doing Something) Program, dedicated to inspiring adult males to get involved in the school district. Former PUSD Superintendent Percy Clark was so taken in — while registered as a sex offender under his real name in Pasadena, Whitaker was never subjected to a background investigation — that Clark gave him keys to a district office and access to files and computers. Clark has told PW that he was unsure how he met Whitaker, but thought it could have been through Whitaker’s then-wife Eloise Crichton, a teacher’s aide at Sierra Madre Elementary School he married while living here.

“The only way Percy Clark would have to testify on my behalf is as a character witness in a penalty phase of the trial and it won’t come to that,” Whitaker said. “We won’t need him because we won’t get there.”

During his days in Pasadena, Whitaker cut an imposing figure, standing six-feet four-inches tall and weighing about 240 pounds. Today, he has lost about 60 pounds and spends most of his days reading law books in his 8-by-12-foot cell. He is under protective custody, due to his status as a registered sex offender and the publicity that his case has generated.

“It’s like Mississippi and Arkansas in here,” Whitaker said of the racism he claims to have experienced while in jail. “This is deeper than Jim Crow. They would lynch me if they could.”

When asked if he killed either woman, Whitaker responded: “No, I did not kill anybody, but nobody seems interested in that. That’s what happens when you abuse the process.”

Whitaker, police say, claimed to be a medical student at the time of Rasmussen’s death. He would not discuss his alibi in that case or his relationship with Rasmussen.

“I never said I was a medical student,” Whitaker said. “Things get perpetrated and turned around all the time. It happens all the time in newspapers. They say I used 18 aliases. Some of that is just misspellings. My name is John Laurence Whitaker-Betances. My last name is hyphenated. That happens all the time with people of Puerto Rican descent.”

Officials say Whitaker’s legal name is not Betances, and point out that during both prison stretches his name was John Laurence Whitaker.

“The facts are what will stand the test,” Whitaker said. “It’s going to come down a lot different than what people think.”

29 Jan 2009

Mr. Whitaker is due back in court next on March 23. See http://orangecountyda.com/docs/1531282312009casemanagementlist.pdf for details.

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http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/the_happy_hour_alibi/6850/

Pasadena Weekly

The Happy Hour alibi

Defense claims former PUSD volunteer was drinking with friends at the time of 1975 murder

By Aaron Harris , André Coleman 01/29/2009

The attorney for John Laurence Whitaker — a convicted rapist and child molester who posed as a medical student and later as a decorated Vietnam veteran under the name of John Whitaker Betances while running a volunteer program in Pasadena schools — said his client was at home drinking the night Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District clerk Bodil Rasmussen was strangled nearly 34 years ago, one of two cold-case murders Whitaker is charged with.

“Whitaker was having drinks with two doctors at about the time when the [Rasmussen murder] was supposed to have been taking place that evening,” Orange County Assistant Public Defender Lewis Clapp said without elaborating.

Further, “Witnesses saw Bodil Rasmussen within an hour of her death in the company of a tall, white male who used a lot of foul language,” Clapp said, again without specifying who saw the other man or who at the time of the killing was with Whitaker. [Whitaker is African-American.]

“The problem is that many people had given the police statements, but over time some people have died and memories have faded,” Clapp said.

In addition to the murder of Rasmussen, investigators believe Whitaker is also responsible for the 1983 killing of Patricia Ann Carpenter in Laguna Beach. Both cases hinge largely on the results of DNA testing done with evidence obtained at the crime scenes.

Whitaker, who even ran for a junior college board seat under the Betances persona and frequently visited the Pasadena Weekly office dressed in a beret and military fatigues, left town abruptly in early 2004. That July, he was picked up by authorities in Oregon, where he had moved. Registered as a sex offender in Pasadena under his real name — all the while publicly going as Betances — Whitaker failed to register in Oregon, and was arrested. Also on hand for the arrest were Orange County homicide investigators.

If convicted, the 61-year-old Whitaker, who has been incarcerated in an Orange County jail without bail since his return from Oregon more than four years ago, faces life in prison.

In the case of Rasmussen, her pantyhose were tied around her neck and it was later determined that she had been raped. Witnesses, Clapp said, had seen Whitaker and the victim together hours before her death on June 25, 1975.

Whitaker emerged as a suspect almost immediately and was questioned by investigators. Pasadena Police Chief Bernard Melekian, who was a patrol sergeant in the Santa Monica Police Department when the gruesome crime occurred, recalls the murder, but not Whitaker’s involvement. Whitaker allegedly claimed he was a medical student — although police now say they know he was not — and was eventually released due to a lack of evidence.

Multnomah County prosecutor Chuck French told the Weekly in 2005 that while on the witness stand in Oregon for failing to register as a sex offender, Whitaker said he left California the day before Carpenter was murdered, claiming to be in New York City planning to visit relatives in Virginia.

Carpenter’s body was found Dec. 17, 1983, lying on the side of a dark road in Laguna Beach. For years detectives said that Carpenter did not fight back the night she was murdered, but her sister, Cynthia, said she knew all along that her sister put up a struggle.

“I said the only way she didn’t fight is if she was completely out of it,” Cynthia told the Weekly in 2007. “I found out 23 years later that she did fight and that his skin was under her fingernails. She was no pushover.”

Shortly after DNA from the Carpenter crime scene was tied to Whitaker, detectives in Santa Monica matched his DNA to the Rasmussen murder scene.

Police had Whitaker’s DNA profile on file following a 10-year prison sentence in California for rape, beginning in 1987. In the early 1970s, he served three years in his home state of New York for sodomizing a 14-year-old boy.

Whitaker is now being held without bail at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach pending trial, which has been delayed 17 times due to requests for continuances by both prosecutors and defense attorneys. His next court appearance is set for March 23.

“These continuances have all been agreed upon by both sides because there is so much info involved in this case,” said Clapp, who on Jan. 12 requested and received the latest one.

“They waited 30 years before they filed this case. I needed to find out everything I could about my client’s life and collect witnesses,” he said. “Witnesses have told the police who investigated the case that Rasmussen and Whitaker had known each other and socialized. This same witness said she knew Rasmussen and the [other] person she was with.”

At one point, prosecutors feared that they would not be able to prosecute Whitaker for both crimes because of jurisdictional conflicts between Santa Monica and Orange County. But a state Supreme Court ruling clearing the way for counties to try suspects for multiple homicides, even if they took place in different counties, allowed prosecutors in Orange County to charge him with both crimes, said Orange County Assistant District Attorney Matt Murphy.

“In the next three months, we’re probably going to see a motion by the defense team for a speedy trial. Hopefully, we will be able to get that.” Murphy said. “We’re confident that we may have this finished by the end of this year.”

After being released from prison on the rape conviction in 1997, Whitaker moved to Pasadena, assumed the name John Whitaker Betances and claimed that he was a highly trained military veteran who once escaped from a prison camp by chewing through a Viet Cong guard’s neck.

Quoting the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, the Pasadena Star-News reported shortly after Whitaker’s arrest that there is no record of anyone using Whitaker’s Social Security number serving in the Army. And officials at Georgetown University and State University of New York at Albany say they have no record of Whitaker studying medicine at either college.

In 2001 Whitaker lost an election for a seat on the Pasadena City College board of trustees. Around the same time, he became one of the leaders of the PUSD’s DADS (Dads Are Doing Something) program, which advocated fathers playing larger roles in the lives of their school-age children.

Whitaker had no children in the district and, although the district did not perform any background checks on him, former Superintendent Percy Clark gave Whitaker keys to offices in the district administration building and access to district files and computers.

During that time, Whitaker lived in an apartment in the 500 block of East Washington Boulevard in Pasadena. While there, he married teacher’s aide Eloise Crichton, another tenant in the building. According to a restraining order filed by Crichton in 2003, Whitaker threatened to kill her.

“[He] would often stare at me in the dark while I was trying to sleep, he blocked my path when I tried to leave the apartment, he threw a cup of soda in my face, and he said he should just kill me and get it over with,” she wrote.

Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:01:12 -0700
Subject: PW: Identity crisis

The good folks of the P.O.W. Network keep a running tab on Mr. Whitaker http://www.pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies205.htm .

Their efforts to expose those who, like Mr. Whitaker, steal the honor belonging to others, is to be lauded, IMHO.

Btw, next Tuesday will mark the four-year anniversary of the date that the state says it lost track of Mr. Whitaker. One would think the "brains" at the state DOJ would be able to keep track of perverts like him, but, as they say, never assume.

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http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/identity_crisis/6078/

Pasadena Weekly

Identity crisis

When they learn his whereabouts, maybe Orange County officials will finally get accused killer John Whitaker’s name right

By Andre Coleman 06/19/2008

On Friday, John Laurence Whitaker turned 61. But instead of playing with grandchildren or getting together with old friends, Whitaker celebrated in the same old place he was last year, the year before that and the year before that — the Harbor Justice Center jail in Orange County.

His moustache and goatee are graying and must be almost white by now. And the six-foot-one-inch, 250-pound accused killer still cuts an imposing physical figure — that is, if he looks anything like the last time he was seen in court by the Weekly back in March 2007.

But even though the flamboyant Whitaker — also a convicted sex offender who disguised himself as a decorated Vietnam veteran nearly six years ago while running a volunteer mentoring program with the Pasadena Unified School District — has been in custody for nearly four years, he appears no closer to trial for two separate slayings than when he was first arrested.

After 32 court appearances, authorities in Orange County still don’t seem to know Whitaker’s real name. In fact, on May 27, the date of his last hearing, Whitaker didn’t even show up, because “He simply did not get on the bus” from the jail to the courthouse, said an Orange County District Attorney’s Office staff member, who was unable to explain why that happened.

But further complicating the public’s efforts to keep track of Whitaker’s case, the Sheriff’s Department and the District Attorney’s Office both continue listing him under one of his primary aliases, Whitaker-Betances, and that apparently includes all of their records.

Whitaker’s attorney, Lewis Clapp of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, did not return calls for comment. Neither did prosecutor Matt Murphy of the Orange County District Attorney’s office.

“The thing about these old cases,” Murphy said in a previous interview, “is the defense always wants to test everything.” Murphy said if he objected to the defense’s request for DNA testing, it could be grounds for an appeal if Whitaker is convicted of strangling prostitute Patricia Anne Carpenter in Laguna Beach in 1983 or school administrator Bodil Cecelia Rasmussen in Santa Monica in 1975.

“I would rather just give it to them now. The results usually don’t change,” Murphy said of the DNA evidence that he believes links Whitaker to the two murders. “I’m really looking forward to getting into this trial. I can’t wait,” Murphy said at the time — two years ago.

“Basically it has been delay, delay, delay as much as possible,” said Rene Amy, a longtime schools critic and attorney who has kept an eye on the Whitaker case since the beginning. Amy was one of the first to say that Whitaker was a fraud after he learned that a veterans’ rights group was onto the deception and posting stories about it on its Web site. “One way to slow things down is to require a court order for anything and everything. It is a tactic to try and delay a court date as much as possible,” Amy explained. “They can drag this out for years.”

Whitaker was first incarcerated in 2004 under his real name, and he is also listed under that name on the Department of Justice Megan’s Law database for registered sexual offenders. However, that same Web site lists Whitaker’s whereabouts as unknown, despite his arrest four years ago and multiple court appearances during that time. Further, the Orange Country DA’s Office now lists his name as John Laurence Whitaker-Betances, as does the OC Sheriff’s Web site, along with a list of other aliases.

Correspondence sent recently from the Weekly to John Laurence Whitaker was returned with a quickly scrawled note, stating “No inmate with this name is in our custody.”

A few months after he suddenly disappeared from Pasadena, authorities in Oregon arrested Whitaker for failure to register as a sex offender in that state. At that time it was learned that Whitaker had been lying about his name and his tale of being a decorated Vietnam veteran. He wore military fatigues, a black military-style beret and once claimed to have gnawed through the neck of a Vietcong captor to escape a POW camp.

Whitaker, however, had registered with Pasadena police, only under his real name, John Laurence Whitaker, for sex crimes that he had committed against a 14-year-old boy back in New York in the 1970s.

During the five years that he lived in Pasadena under the name Whitaker-Betances, no one — including former PUSD Superintendent Percy Clark, who once gave Whitaker keys to the administration building and access to an office at district headquarters — suspected Whitaker’s real identity or his criminal past.

While in custody for the failure to register in Oregon, authorities said Whitaker was tied through DNA to the Carpenter and Rasmussen killings. Rasmussen and Whitaker apparently lived in the same apartment building, and he had been interviewed by investigators in relation to the murder.

Carpenter’s sister, Cynthia, said her sister was pretty tough and probably fought with her assailant. “I said the only way she didn't fight was if she was completely out of it,” she said in a 2006 interview with the Weekly. “I found out 23 years later that she did fight and that his skin was under her fingernails. She was no pushover.”

The skin particles were apparently all investigators needed to identify a suspect, provided that person’s DNA was already on file. It didn’t take long for forensics experts to come up with a match to Whitaker in both the Carpenter slaying and the Rasmussen strangulation, which was done with a pair of the victim’s pantyhose, according to Santa Monica police officials.

Whitaker has pleaded not guilty to both murder charges. His next court date is set for June 27, a hearing for — what else? — a defense motion to re-examine DNA evidence.

Ironically, Acting City Manager and Pasadena ex-Police Chief Bernard Melekian was a patrol sergeant in Santa Monica at the time of Rasmussen’s murder. In fact, Melekian responded to the call after her body was discovered.

“Homicides are very unique. You don’t forget the ones you go on,” Melekian said in a previous interview. “I always wondered what happened and if that crime had been solved.”

Jan 18, 2008

John Whitaker, the flamboyant fraud and man hand-selected by Percy Clark to run the PUSD's "Dads Are Doing Something" program, will not face the death penalty, although he stands accused of crimes for which the ultimate punishment can be meted out.

That word comes today from the Orange County District Attorney's office.

Mr. Whitaker, who has been sitting in the Orange County Jail for just over three years, is accused of two murders coupled with the special circumstance of multiple murder. As such, the prosecutor could seek the death penalty, but has chosen not to do so, according to OCDA spokesperson Farrah Emami.

Instead, the maximum penalty, should Mr. Whitaker eventually be convicted on all counts, is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Prosecutors allege that Mr. Whitaker killed two women. He allegedly strangled a Malibu school district clerk in 1995 and an Orange County prostitute in 1983.

Mr. Whitaker faces a preliminary hearing on the charges against him on January 29, 2008. This hearing has been scheduled for several earlier dates, but each has been delayed by Mr. Whitaker. Mr. Whitaker, of course, has the right to a speedy trial, but it appears that he'd rather spend time in the OC Jail than in the general prison population.

Here in PAsadena, Mr. Whitaker is remembered for his larger-than-life persona.

Claiming to be a retired Colonel with the US Army Special Forces, Mr. Whitaker was also reportedly known for his exciting tales of life as a P.O.W. in Vietnam, telling classrooms full of school children how he once chewed through the neck of a V.C. prison guard in order to escape.

Mr. Whitaker told a lot of lies, though. He is, in reality, a convicted child sex offender who has spent a large portion of his life in prison for sex-related crimes. He is a Megan's Law listee. At the time Mr. Clark selected him to run the DADS program, Mr. Whitaker was registered with the Pasadena police as required by Megan's Law.

For a relatively complete dossier on Mr. Whitaker's recent legal problems, see http://www.pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies205.htm .

Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:05:18 -0800
Subject: John Whitaker's Date With Justice Delayed Again

John Whitaker, the man Percy Clark selected to head the PUSD D.A.D.S. volunteer program, even though Mr. Whitaker was a convicted child sex offender listed on California's Megan's Law website, will have spent nearly three years in the Orange County Jail without a trial by the time his next shot at a preliminary hearing comes up.

Mr. Whitaker, who is reportedly charged with two counts of murder for "cold case" sex slayings, was extradited from Oregon to California in early 2005, and has been incarcerated since.

At nearly every turn, Mr. Whitaker has worked to delay his date with justice.

Last scheduled for just after Thanksgiving, Mr. Whitaker now faces a preliminary hearing on December 18, according to the Orange County D.A.'s office http://www.orangecountyda.com/docs/casemanagementlist.pdf .

Mr. Whitaker, of course, was a close associate of Percy Clark, and was known for his tales of derring-do in Vietnam.

Turns out that Mr. Whitaker could talk a lot - but that instead of being the war hero he vociferously claimed to be, Mr. Whitaker was a sick individual who had spent most of his life in jail for sex crimes.

For more on Mr. Whitaker, see http://pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies205.htm .

http://pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=4855&IssueNum=80

Pasadena Weekly

July 12, 2007

Time to kill

Court documents allege Whitaker threatened to kill ex-wife

By André Coleman

THE REAL DEAL: John Whitaker’s Megan’s Law database photo.

A high-profile onetime Pasadena Unified School District volunteer and convicted sex offender currently on trial for the murders of two women allegedly threatened to kill his former wife shortly before the couple divorced in 2003, according to court documents obtained by the Weekly.

According to an application for a restraining order filed by Eloise Crichton, John Laurence Whitaker verbally abused Crichton and threatened to harm her daughter and son-in-law if they should “interfere in his business.”

Whitaker, who sought his own restraining order against Crichton at that time, claimed Crichton demanded nightly massages, withheld sex from him and mocked him for his “sexual inadequacies.”

Whitaker, 60, is accused of killing Bodil Rasmussen, his former neighbor and an employee of the Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District, in 1975, and Patricia Ann Carpenter, whose body was discovered in Laguna Hills in 1983.

Both women were strangled.

The two cases had long grown cold by the time Orange County police detectives in 2004 used DNA evidence to arrest Whitaker, who was living in Oregon in a trailer with a woman he had met on the Internet.

While living in Pasadena, Whitaker had been going by the name John Whitaker Betances, pretending to be a decorated Vietnam veteran. Under this guise, Whitaker started a chapter of DADS (Dads Are Doing Something) and was embraced as a role model by former PUSD Superintendent Percy Clark.

In reality, Whitaker was a convicted sex offender who had registered his whereabouts with Pasadena police for four years under his real name. However, a record check was never conducted on him by Clark, who was so impressed with Whitaker's assumed persona that he gave Whitaker an office and access to district headquarters.

When arrested in Oregon, Whitaker had failed to register as a sex offender there. He was already in custody for suspicion of that crime when Orange County homicide detectives linked him through DNA evidence to the murder of Carpenter, who police say was a prostitute.

A pre-trial hearing in Santa Ana Superior Court, where he is being prosecuted as John Laurence Whitaker Betances, has been set for Aug. 31.

As laid out in the restraining order sought by Crichton and eventually granted a year priorto his arrest, Whitaker “would often stare at me in the dark while I was trying to sleep, he blocked my path when I tried to leave the apartment, he threw a cup of soda in my face, and he said he should ‘just kill me and get it over with.”

Whitaker and Crichton apparently met while they were staying in the same apartment building on Washington Boulevard in Pasadena.

Crichton did not return several calls for comment.

During his marriage to Crichton, Whitaker was known as Betances and regaled anyone listening with Rambo-type stories of his tours of Vietnam, where he once claimed to have bitten through a guard's neck to escape from a prison camp.

While working under Clark at the PUSD, Whitaker sent out inspirational emails to men in the community, urging them to get involved in the lives of their children.

Whitaker's act even fooled several professors at Pasadena City College, where he unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the Board of Trustees.

Whitaker's picture, description and five of his aliases — police now say he may have used as many as 18 different identities — have been posted on the Megan's Law Database since 1999, when he failed to update his registration after moving to Pasadena, a mistake he did not repeat while living here.

Authorities say Crichton never appeared to know Whitaker's true identity. However, she may have suspected his war stories were untrue. “He claims to be retired from the armed forces,” Crichton wrote in her request for the restraining order in 2003. “Yet I have never seen any supporting documents to that effect. I have never seen any tax returns in his name, any disability insurance, unemployment or Social Security benefits.”

By the time Whitaker and Crichton met, he had already served 10 years in a New York prison for rape of a minor. In 1997, he was released from parole.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Carpenter, Patricia's sister, was beginning to give up hope that police would ever find Patricia's killer.

Carpenter said the last time she saw her sister alive was on Dec. 16, 1983, a night they argued. When Cynthia awoke the next day, her sister was gone. After several days, Patricia still had not shown up and Cynthia feared the worst.

After a conversation with a pimp she knew and one of Patricia's friends, Cynthia discovered that her sister had been dropped off in Hollywood and was last seen getting into a car with a man. Police questioned the friend, a man known only as Tony, but days later he vanished and the trail went cold. Detectives working the case at the time told Cynthia that her sister didn't fight with her assailant.

In 2004, that statement was proved wrong. Skin particles were found under Carpenter's fingernails and were later matched to Whitaker.

“I said the only way she didn't fight is if she was completely out of it,” Cynthia Carpenter said. “I found out 23 years later she did fight and his skin was under her fingernails. She was no pushover.

I have learned to put my trust in God because he says vengeance is mine, and sometimes we have to step back and let faith take its course. I have enough faith in the legal system that justice will prevail.”

Police also had DNA evidence from the 1975 murder of Rasmussen, who lived in the same Santa Monica apartment complex as Whitaker. According to authorities, Whitaker was the last person seen with her. However, police didn't have enough evidence to hold him.

Orange County Assistant District Attorney Matt Murphy did not return phone calls for this story.

http://pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=3981&IssueNum=43

Pasadena Weekly

October 26, 2006

Make-up exam

Defense wants murder suspect John Laurence Whitaker’s DNA examined again

By André Coleman

An Orange County court commissioner ordered new DNA tests for convicted sexual molester, murder suspect and former Pasadena school volunteer John Laurence Whitaker, who awaits trial in the deaths of two women.

Whitaker appeared in a Harbor Justice Superior Court on Friday where Superior Court Commissioner Thomas J. Rees granted a defense motion for a five-month continuance to have Whitaker’s DNA matched against evidence left at two scenes, one in 1975 and the other in 1983.

“The thing about these old cases is the defense always wants to test everything,” said Assistant District Attorney Matt Murphy. “Defense attorney Don Ronaldson is very methodical in the way he approaches his cases.”

While defense attorneys believe additional testing could clear Whitaker in these cases, prosecutors say his genetic marker could show up in other cases after being run through a nationwide databank, though other connections are doubtful.

Ronaldson did not appear in court. Instead Orange County Public Defender Anthony Mesa appeared on Whitaker’s behalf. Mesa declined comment.

Whitaker was taken into custody July 30, 2004, after he failed to register as a sex offender in his new home of Gresham, Ore., where he lived in a trailer with the mother of a woman he had met over the Internet. Shortly before his arrest, DNA evidence linked Whitaker to the murders of Patricia Ann Carpenter, in 1983, and Bodil Rasmussen of Santa Monica in 1975.

Rasmussen was found dead on the beach in 1975 and Carpenter was found near a Los Angeles Times distribution center in Laguna Beach in 1983. Both women had been strangled. The ligatures used in the murders were still wrapped around their necks when their bodies were found.

Murphy would not say if he thought Whitaker had committed other murders, but said his office was not attempting to connect him to any other cases.

“The backlog of unsolved cases in LA County alone is extremely huge and it would take hundreds of man hours to attempt to try and pin him to any of them. When we opened the box in the 1975 case, it was like opening a time capsule. It hadn’t been touched. Detectives would have to take out all of the evidence in every unsolved case and re-submit it. If he has done something else, it would probably surface by accident,” Murphy said.

Whitaker arrived in Pasadena in 1998. By then he had already served three years of a 10-year prison sentence for rape and was required to register as a sex offender with the Pasadena Police Department.

But in 2000, he failed to update his registration, resulting in a warrant for his arrest. Months later, Whitaker started going by the name of John Whitaker Betances, a Vietnam hero and PUSD volunteer for the DADS (Dads Are Doing Something) program, which sought to get men involved in the lives of their children’s lives. He even ran for a seat on the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees.

Hugo Schwyzer, who taught Whitaker at Pasadena City College, said he was horrified to learn Whitaker had been arrested for murder.

“Sometimes in academia we joke about students or colleagues being serial killers,” Schwyzer said. “He would not have made my top 50 of people I would have thought that about. I was absolutely floored. He set himself apart because he was older. He was very outgoing, very jovial and warm. He always sat up front and participated and asked questions and came to speak to me during office hours. He was really, really interested in history and ideas. He wanted to talk about military battles and wars. He said he had been in the military and made self-deprecating remarks about his military service.”

One of the stories was a tale of escaping a Vietnam POW prison camp by chewing through a guard’s neck.

Whitaker didn’t look the part of war hero on Friday, however, as he sat in a four-foot-by-12-foot mesh cage in the courtroom. Clean-shaven, with a nearly white moustache and goatee, and clad in an orange jumpsuit, Whitaker listened quietly as the judge granted the continuance. His only words were spoken when he said yes to the commissioner’s question about whether he understood what was going on and that he was relinquishing his right to a speedy trial.

Murphy said he did not object to the DNA testing because it could serve as grounds for an appeal later.

“I would rather just give it to them now,” Murphy said. “The results usually don’t change. I’m really looking forward to getting into this trial. I can’t wait.”

6/22/2006 -0700

I've heard you have to kill *three* people to be a serial killer.

In Mr. Whitaker's case, that'd make him a serial sex killer.

------------

http://pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=3564&IssueNum=25

Pasadena Weekly
June 22, 2006

Murphy’s law
DNA links Whitaker to second victim
By André Coleman and Aaron Harris

When Santa Monica homicide detectives began investigating the murder of Bodil Rasmussen in 1975, their chances of solving the case were slim.

Rasmussen, who worked for the Santa Monica School District, was found inside of her car, the victim of an apparent strangulation, but the crime scene yielded little evidence, with the undisclosed instrument used to strangle Rasmussen containing no discernable fingerprints.

Police interviewed John Laurence Whitaker, described as an associate of the slain woman, but that interrogation yielded no clues. Shortly thereafter, Whitaker disappeared.

Today, prosecutors say new technology has revealed that there was conclusive evidence left at the crime scene after all; DNA evidence found on the weapon used to choke the life out of Rasmussen that has been linked to Whitaker, a former Pasadena Unified School District volunteer who masqueraded as a decorated war veteran and operated under an assumed name and was later revealed as a registered sex offender. Since being found out, Whitaker has been tied to another murder, this one involving the 1983 strangulation of a known prostitute in Laguna Beach.

Whitaker, who is being held without bail in Orange County, was already charged with murder in the death of Patricia Anne Carpenter, another case in which DNA evidence is expected to play a decisive role for the prosecution.

Orange County Assistant District Attorney Matt Murphy told the Weekly that charges against Whitaker were set to be amended this week to include another count of murder for the death of Rasmussen.

"Advancements in forensic technology are what have allowed us to charge him with this," Murphy said without elaborating. "We are very confident in the evidence that we have collected."

Whitaker served as a volunteer on PUSD’s Dads Are Doing Something (DADS) program under the alias John Whitaker Betances. Under that identity, he claimed to be a Vietnam hero and constantly wore army fatigues and a military beret while speaking about the need of men to get involved in the lives of children.

By the time he had started the DADS program, Whitaker had already served prison time for rape and was required to register as a sex offender, which he failed to do once he stopped using his real name.

PUSD officials failed to do a background check on Whitaker before allowing him to lead the program. However, Clark and other school officials have maintained that Whitaker was never alone with children in his role as DADS director.

On July 30, 2004, Whitaker was arrested in his new home of Grisham, Ore., for allegedly failing to register as a sex offender in his new home state, where he lived in a trailer with the mother of a woman he had met over the Internet. Authorities there handed Whitaker over to Laguna Beach homicide investigators, who traveled north to pin Whitaker with Carpenter’s murder. Whitaker has also been charged with two felony counts of failing to register as a sex offender.

Orange County Public Defender Don Ronaldson declined to talk about details of the case, but said, "We’re in the process of getting all of the information on John’s cases and his background together. We look forward to vigorously defending the case."

According to Santa Monica Detective Frank Fabrega, evidence collected during the initial investigation of the Rasmussen murder was resubmitted in June to the LA County crime lab for processing, which, like the evidence taken at the Carpenter crime scene, came back with a DNA match to Whitaker.

http://www.smdp.com/site/archives/062006.pdf

Santa Monica Daily Press

June 20, 2006

Cold case thaws

Suspect faces justice for 1975 murder in SM

BY MICHAEL J. TITTINGER AND CAROLYN SACKARIASON

Daily Press Staff Writers

NEWPORT BEACH — More than

30 years after the body of 36-yearold Bodil Rasmussen was found strangled and dumped in a Santa Monica parking lot, the man long

thought to be her assailant will finally stand before a judge today and answer to murder charges.

John Whitaker Betances, of Pasadena, was arrested in Oregon and extradited to Orange County in 2004 after DNA samples linked him

to the 1975 murder of Rasmussen and another female victim eight years later in Laguna Canyon.

Betances, 57, will enter a plea at his arraignment this morning at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach.

Betances lived in the same apartment complex as Rasmussen and was a suspect at the time of her murder, according to the Orange County

District Attorney’s office, but there was insufficient evidence to charge him for the crime.

The Santa Monica Police Department left the unsolved case open for investigation and preserved evidence for more than three decades.

“The Santa Monica and Laguna Beach police departments should be commended for having the forethought to preserve the evidence

and never giving up on getting justice for two young women whose lives were cut tragically short,” said Senior Deputy District Attorney

Matt Murphy of the Homicide Unit, who is prosecuting the case.

“Technology will continue to make getting away with these types of crimes more difficult,” added Murphy.

Betances, who was also known as John Laurence Whitaker, was said to have been living a double life in Pasadena, according to

a story first reported in the Pasadena Star-News in November of 2004.

Betances reportedly was a well-respected civic leader, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Pasadena City College board of trustees in 2001. He

was also involved in the local school district as a recruiter for a program that trained fathers to volunteer in schools.

But Betances’ seemingly normal life was turned upside down when Laguna Beach Police Detective Paul Litchenberg began sifting through the
evidence room, gathering DNA samples from the 1983 murder scene of 26-year-old Patricia Carpenter and matching them up with the Department of

Justice’s database of convicted felons.

On May 3, 2004, the evidence linked Betances to both of the killings.A DNA sample from underneath the fingernails of Carpenter,

whose partially nude body was found dumped along the road in Laguna Beach, and a semen sample found on Rasmussen led to the arrest

and subsequent murder charges.

Betances’ DNA had been in law enforcement databases since 1994, when he was released from a California prison after serving

10 years for rape, according to Litchenberg. He was discharged from parole in 1997 and moved to Pasadena a year later.

Through an Internet search, the detective found Betances in Gresham, Ore. in July of 2004, after having apparently left Pasadena

in 2003 following a separation from his wife, who was unaware of his previous life.

In Oregon, Betances moved in with a woman he met over the Internet. But because he failed to register aas a sex offender,

he was placed under arrest, denying any involvement in the two women’s murders.

Police records later showed that Betances had been questioned by Santa Monica police nearly three decades before that time, so he

contacted detectives here.

In September, Santa Monica investigators got a hit on one of their cold cases — this time Betances’DNA matched up to evidence

taken from the body of Rasmussen, of Carson, who was found dead in the parking lot of the old Sea Castle at 1725 Appian Way.

Betances had been with Rasmussen the night before her death.He told Santa Monica detectives that he was a medical student and

had a legal background, according to the Star-News.

What he failed to tell them was that he was a parolee who had been convicted of sodomy in 1964 and served three years
in a New York state prison, or of the rape he served time for in the ’80s and early ’90s.

Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:26:58 -0700

The 13th time *was* the charm.

After celebrating two birthdays behind bars, 59-year-old flamboyant fraud http://pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies205.htm John Whitaker, aka John Laurence Whitaker Betances http://www.ocsd.org/InmateInfo/ViewInmateData.asp?BookingNumber=2231105 , finally pled "not guilty" to a charge of murder this morning down in the OC.

He's had a dozen prior chances to proclaim his innocence and demand a speedy trial.

OCDA's press rep Farrah Emami said that Mr. Whitaker will have his next day in court on October 20, for a pre-trial hearing.

As the OCDA puts it, Mr. Whitaker is "(c)harged with the 1983 strangulation murder of a woman in Laguna Beach. Through TracKRS, a DNA match linked Betances to the killing. He was living in Oregon at the time of his arrest. He has been extradited to California to face murder charges." http://www.orangecountyda.com/docs/casemanagementlist.pdf

Mr. Whitaker, a Megan's Law http://meganslaw.ca.gov/ listee http://snipurl.com/pce6 here in California, made quite a splash during his time in Pasadena.

Percy Clark was so impressed with Mr. Whitaker that he personally put Mr. Whitaker in charge of the PUSD D.A.D.S. program and gave him access to PUSD computers, equipment, supplies and personnel.

Most will likely remember a story by Aaron Harris from the Pasadena Weekly http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/exclusives.html#ex04

, dated January 26 of this year, which included the following bits:

Whitaker was "accused of

> the 1983 strangulation murder of prostitute Patricia Ann Carpenter,

> whose body was found dumped along side a dark road by police officers

> in Laguna Beach. Until late 2004, the trail to catch her killer

> remained cold until detectives used technology that wasn't available

> in 1983 to match DNA evidence to that of her accused murderer."

"> Investigators hope the same DNA evidence that linked Whitaker to the

> murder of Carpenter will tie him to the strangulation of Santa Monica

> School District employee Bodil Rasmussen in 1975.

> The OC DA's office is now putting together a case against Whitaker

> that they feel is solid enough to charge him with the Rasmussen murder.

> As Betances, Whitaker claimed to be a Vietnam vet, once claiming he

> escaped from a prison camp by chewing through a guard's neck."

A few people have expressed fears that having Mr. Whitaker roam the halls down at 351 may have endangered PUSD employees.

Btw, Percy Clark, the man who put Mr. Whitaker in charge of the D.A.D.S. program, remains at the helm of PUSD despite his proven plagiarism.

June 19, 2006

Maybe the 13th time will be the charm, because the 12th wasn't.

John Whitaker, the man Percy Clark personally put in charge of the PUSD D.A.D.S. program - despite Whitaker being a locally-registered sex offender and Megan's Law listee - will have his 13th chance to plead "not guilty" to a charge of murder tomorrow in Orange County http://www.orangecountyda.com/docs/casemanagementlist.pdf .

Mr. Whitaker, who has a long string of sex offenses on his record, charmed many in the community, especially with his (totally fabricated) tales of military bravery.

In a manner much like that of one who claims to have dragged a police dog to a lunch counter, Mr. Whitaker would tell tales of derring-do that were total lies, but were such great lies that those who heard simply wanted to believe them.

for more about Mr. Whitaker, see the P.O.W. Network's "Phonies" page on him http://pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies205.htm .

Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:46:07 -0700

It'll be mid-June, the 16th, to be precise, when John Whitaker gets his twelfth chance to plead "not guilty" and start proceedings against him to determine his guilt in the murder case he faces. See http://www.orangecountyda.com/docs/1725391442006cases.pdf for details.

Mr. Whitaker, the locally-registered sex offender, flamboyant fraud, and Megan's Law listee put in charge of the PUSD D.A.D.S. program by Percy Clark - and thereby granted access to district computers, stationary, and the like - has been in jail in Orange County since January of last year when he lost his 1/2 year fight against extradition from Oregon.

He's had 11 prior chances to plead not guilty, including one last Friday, but has chosen to have each delayed.

As a fan of "Arrested Development," I can understand that a guy might find the OC Greybar kind of homey, but...

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=3155&IssueNum=10

Pasadena Weekly

March 9, 2006

Whitaker's ninth no comment

By André Coleman

John Laurence Whitaker, a convicted sex offender who under the name John Whitaker Betances flourished as one of the Pasadena Unified School District's top volunteers, has once again delayed his arraignment on a murder charge.

For the ninth time in more than a year, Whitaker appeared Friday in Orange County Superior Court, but managed to avoid making a plea in relation to the 1983 strangling death of Patricia Ann Carpenter.

Held without bail at the Harbor Justice Center, Whitaker also faces two counts of failing to register as a sex offender in Oregon, where Laguna Beach homicide detectives arrested him in July 2004.

Orange County prosecutors have told the Weekly they want to charge Whitaker with another killing, the 1975 murder of Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District employee Bodil Rasmussen, to which detectives say he is linked by DNA evidence.

After serving 10 years in prison for rape, Whitaker came to Pasadena in 1998 and soon thereafter became a top community volunteer with the district's DADS (Dads Are Doing Something) program, which sought to get men more involved in their children's lives. He also ran for a seat on the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees.

Whitaker is scheduled to appear in court again on April 14.

March 6, 2006

John Whitaker once again did not exercise his right to a speedy trial, once again delaying his arraignment on a charge of murder and two counts of failing to register as a sex offender http://www.ocsd.org/InmateInfo/ViewInmateData.asp?BookingNumber=2231105 , according to the OC DA's office http://www.orangecountyda.com/docs/142117332006cases.pdf .

Mr. Whitaker, whom PUSD supe Percy Clark personally chose to run the PUSD DADS volunteer program even though Mr. Whitaker was a locally-registered sex offender on the Megan's Law list http://snipurl.com/n85f , was given the opportunity to plead "guilty" or "not guilty" this past Friday, but instead, sought a delay.

Mr. Whitaker will once again have a chance to start the process of getting out of the OC jail on April 14 - his tenth shot at it.

OC DA representatives have told me that there are often multiple delays in murder arraignments, especially if a "mental" component (I guess that means insanity) is being considered for the plea.

Note, btw, that the state's Megan's Law list is quite obviously snafued: John Whitaker has been in the OC jail since January, 2005 - but the Megan's Law site says of him: "LOCATION UNKNOWN."

About a year ago, I sent in an update on Mr. Whitaker's whereabouts to the CA DOJ.

Apparently, nobody up there cares.

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/exclusives.html#ex04

Pasadena Weekly

January 26, 2006

Whitaker arraignment delayed again

For the eighth time in just more than a year, former Pasadena resident John Laurence Whitaker, aka John Whitaker Betances, has had his date to be arraigned for murder postponed again.

The former candidate for the PCC board of trustees and volunteer for the PUSD chapter of DADS (Dads Are Doing Something) stands accused of the 1983 strangulation murder of prostitute Patricia Ann Carpenter, whose body was found dumped along side a dark road by police officers in Laguna Beach. Until late 2004, the trail to catch her killer remained cold until detectives used technology that wasn't available in 1983 to match DNA evidence to that of her accused murderer.

Whitaker also is charged with failing to update his state-mandated registration as a sex offender.

"We're still building up some of our evidence," said Orange County Assistant DA Matt Murphy. "We're going through the final stages of verification of some of the information that we have just to make sure we have all that we need for our case."

Prosecutors will try again to arraign Whitaker on March 3.

Investigators hope the same DNA evidence that linked Whitaker to the murder of Carpenter will tie him to the strangulation of Santa Monica School District employee Bodil Rasmussen in 1975.

The OC DA's office is now putting together a case against Whitaker that they feel is solid enough to charge him with the Rasmussen murder.

As Betances, Whitaker claimed to be a Vietnam vet, once claiming he escaped from a prison camp by chewing through a guard's neck.

- Aaron Harris

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/citybeat.html

Pasadena Weekly

December 1, 2005

Murder in the first - twice

OC prosecutor says new murder charge will be filed against Whitaker

By André Coleman and Aaron Harris

The Weekly has learned that Orange County prosecutors plan to file an additional first-degree murder charge against John Laurence Whitaker, a sex offender and onetime Pasadena schools volunteer who already faces capital murder charges in relation to the 1983 strangulation of a prostitute in Laguna Beach.

Orange County Assistant District Attorney Matt Murphy told the newspaper that Whitaker, who went by the name John Whitaker Betances and pretended to be a decorated Vietnam veteran during his time in Pasadena, will also be charged with the 1975 strangulation murder of Bodil Rasmussen, an employee with the Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District at the time of her death.

Whitaker was connected to the murder by DNA evidence, but Santa Monica police had previously said that they would not be filing charges against Whitaker in connection with that crime.

But Murphy said, "We think we have a good case against Whitaker. Santa Monica PD has put together a great case with good evidence and we're going to try that case along with the one from here in Orange County."

Last year prosecutors charged Whitaker in the nearly 22-year-old murder of Patricia Ann Carpenter, a known prostitute. Carpenter's partially nude body was found Dec. 17, 1983, dumped on Laguna Canyon Road.

Detectives thought the trails on both murders had gone cold. However, according to authorities, Carpenter and Rasmussen fought their assailant and some of his skin was trapped underneath their fingernails. Detectives hoping to find leads fed the evidence into TracKRS, a cold case homicide database that contains the details about thousands of cases, with some including DNA evidence.

In April the database matched DNA from the Carpenter case to Whitaker, whose DNA had been in police databases since 1994 when he was released from prison in New York after serving nearly 10 years for rape. However, Whit-aker's history stretches back 41 years. Beginning in 1964, he served three years in prison for sodomizing a child under 14.

In June, Santa Monica police, using the same database to investigate Rasmussen's murder, came up with a match to Whitaker, Murphy said.

Whitaker was taken into custody July 30, 2004, after failing to register as a sex offender in his new home of Gresham, Ore., where he lived in a trailer with the mother of a woman he had met over the Internet. He was then arrested by Orange County authorities, who had traveled to Oregon to pin Whitaker with the 1983 murder of Carpenter.

If Whitaker is found guilty of both murders, he could receive the death penalty.

Murphy would not say if prosecutors would seek the death penalty.

Whitaker is scheduled for arraignment Jan. 20 and is currently being held without bail in the Harbor Justice Center in Orange County.

According to Santa Monica Police Detective Frank Fabrega, Whitaker was the last person seen with Rasmussen when the two lived in the same apartment complex in Carson in 1975. Police questioned Whitaker at that time, but released him due to a lack of evidence.

Using at least 18 aliases Whitaker managed to avoid police and in 1983 allegedly killed Carpenter. Police are not sure of his whereabouts between 1975 and 1983. According to Los Angeles police, there are no unsolved crimes that fit Whitaker's method of operation, or MO.

When Whitaker landed in Pasadena in 1998 he was unknown to police, including Pasadena Police Chief Bernard Melekian, who actually rolled to the scene of the Rasmussen murder when he worked for the Santa Monica Police Department in 1975.

Upon his arrival in Pasadena in 1998, Whitaker registered as a sex offender with Pasadena police under his real name each year he was here. Two years ago, Whitaker failed to update his registration, resulting in additional felony charges by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office in December.

One of the reasons he may have failed to update his registration was because he was no longer John Laurence Whitaker. Whitaker had assumed the identity of decorated Army Col. John Whitaker Betances, a Vietnam hero who seemed to be straight out of an A-Team episode and claimed to have served six tours of duty in Vietnam. Whitaker once told another newspaper that he had escaped a POW camp by chewing through his captor's neck.

Whitaker also sent out inspirational emails and spoke often about the need of men to get involved in the lives of children. He even headed up the PUSD's DADS, or Dads Are Doing Something, program as a volunteer. At one point he even ran for a seat on the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees.

PUSD officials maintain that Whitaker was not alone with children at any time. But they concede that a background check was never done on the district's top volunteer

Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:59:31 -0800
From: Rene
Subject: Cool Heels: Whitaker's Arraingment Delayed Until 2006

John Whitaker will have been in the Orange County jail for exactly a year and a week when on January 20, 2006 he next has the chance to appear before a judge and plead "guilty" or "not guilty" to a charge of murder and a charge of failure to register as a sex offender.

His arraignment on October 14 was rescheduled, according to a representative of the Orange County District Attorney's office.

Mr. Whitaker, who Percy Clark personally placed in charge of the PUSD D.A.D.S. program, has had a total of 6 opportunities to date to declare his innocence and see a speedy trial, but each has been delayed.

It currently costs California taxpayers about $44,578 to house the average prison inmate per year.

Btw, it was one year ago that the Whitaker story broke locally, here on the list. See the post from 11/05/04 pasted below. Two days later, the story appeared in the PSN.

Rene

---------

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: PUSD "DADS" Founder Reportedly In Custody Facing 2 Murder Charges

Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 20:04:25 -0800

From: Rene Amy <sat9forum@earthlink.net>

To: greatschools <greatschools@yahoogroups.com>

The POW Network http://www.pownetwork.org/ which is "since 11/11/89, dedicated to information distribution on our Prisoners of War and Missing in Action Servicemen", through its "Phonies & Wannabees" pages, has identified PUSD "DADS" Program founding member John Whitaker-Betances as a phony http://www.pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies205.htm . Allegedly using as many as 18 aliases, Mr. Whitaker-Betances frequently claimed to be a former Colonel in the US Army Special Forces. Mr. Whitaker-Betances is the 205th individual the site has identified as a phony.

Ever so much worse, though, the page indicates that Mr. Whitaker-Betances was in court on Monday facing extradition to California to face two murder charges, on cases dating back to 1975 and 1983.

KNBC4 ran a story back in July regarding Mr. Whitaker-Betances arrest http://www.nbc4.tv/news/3600023/detail.html , but no word has been seen in print locally.

According to KNBC, Mr. Whitaker-Betances' was arrested in Oregon for failing to register there as a sex offender, and he then reportedly confessed after his arrest to the murder of a prostitute in Orange County.

The POW site leads off with a description of the DADS program, and the involvement of Mr. Whitaker-Betances and Percy Clark in bringing the program to PUSD. "Volunteers go through a training course and state/district mandated background checks."

Apparently the background check on Mr. Whitaker-Betances was not very thorough.

Btw, list members with good memories will recall that Mr. Whitaker-Betances was a member of this list for a *very* brief period, and that he ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Pasadena City College board in 2001.

Kudos to the POW Network for doing the work no one else could or would.

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board"

-- Mark Twain

07/12/05

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/features/exclusives/webexclusives.html

Whitaker's waiting game

Arraignment for accused killer and former PUSD volunteer rescheduled for next month

By André Coleman

John Laurence Whitaker, a convicted sex offender, a former Pasadena Unified School District volunteer and a onetime candidate for the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees, will once again face arraignment on one count of murder in relation to the strangulation of an Orange County prostitute in 1983.

Friday's scheduled court appearance was Whitaker's fourth time up for arraignment since his arrest on Nov. 5 in Oregon for failing to register as a sex offender. His fifth court appearance is set for Aug. 19 at the Harbor Justice Center in Laguna Niguel.

Using the name John Whitaker Betances, one of at least 18 aliases, Whitaker was appointed by PUSD Superintendent Percy Clark to head up the district's volunteer DADS, or Dads Are Doing Something, program.

Whitaker had claimed to be a retired Green Beret colonel and was not given a background check before volunteering for the district.

After his time as top schools volunteer and a failed bid for a seat on the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees, Whitaker, 57, moved to Oregon but did not register as a sex offender there. He had served three years of a 10-year sentence for rape before coming to Pasadena in 1998, where he registered with police as a sex offender.

Investigators say DNA evidence links Whitaker to the 1983 strangulation murder of Patricia Ann Carpenter, a prostitute whose body was found in Laguna Beach.

Whitaker had also been suspected in the 1975 murder of Santa Monica schools administration clerk Bodil Rasmussen, who was also strangled.

Whitaker, who was questioned by police but released after that murder, was the last person seen with Rasmussen and lived in her building, said Santa Monica Police Lt. Frank Fabrega.

Due to lack of evidence, however, no charges will be filed in relation to that crime, said Fabrega.

March 4, 2005

Rapist, fraud, confidant of Percy Clark, and accused murderer John Whitaker will have his day in court - eventually.

At the request of Mr. Whitaker's public defender, an Orange County judge today delayed Mr. Whitaker's arraignment on a charge of murder until April 15.

Sure, it shouldn't be that hard to plead "not guilty," but as I've explained before, for Mr. Whitaker, who's been tied by DNA evidence to the sex slayings of two women, every day justice is delayed could be a day his own death is delayed.

Of course, Mr. Whitaker is innocent until proven guilty.

http://www.ocgov.com/da/cases.pdf

Case # 04HF1168

Prosecutor: MATT MURPHY

Date/Court/Time: 02/04, H2, 8:30 AM

Hearing Type: Arraignment

BETANCES, JOHN LAURENCE

WHITAKER

Charged with the 1983 strangulation murder

of a woman in Laguna Beach. Through

TracKRS, a DNA match linked Betances to

the killing. He was living in Oregon at the

time of his arrest. He has been extradited to

California to face murder charges.

Orange County Sheriff's Department has Mr. Whitaker in custody. They indicate that Mr. Whitaker's next day in court is March 4, 2005

02/02/2005

The flamboyant fraud Percy Clark personally put in charge of the PUSD DADS program without doing any sort of background check will be arraigned Friday in the Orange County Harbor Justice Center on a murder charge.

John Laurence Whitaker, as he is known to Orange County authorities, is being held without bail for the 1983 murder of a prostitute in Laguna Beach. He has reportedly been linked to that murder, and a second, earlier murder of a Santa Monica school district clerk, by DNA evidence.

Known in Pasadena as John Whitaker Betances or simply John Whitaker (as he was listed on the state's Megan's Law List of "serious" and "dangerous" sex offenders http://snipurl.com/biu9 , and as he was registerd with Pasadena Police while working for PUSD), Mr. Whitaker is also being held on two felony counts of failing to register as a sex offender filed against him by Los Angeles County. Bail for those two felonies, should the murder charge be dropped, is $1,065,000.

Given that Mr. Whitaker was extradited from Oregon on a fugitive warrant, it is highly unlikely that any bail bondsman would take the risk of posting Mr. Whitaker's bail - even if Mr. Whitaker, who has no known occupation, could pay the upfront fee.

Details of Mr. Whitaker's stay in Orange County can be found via the Orange County Sheriff's Department's website http://www.ocsd.org/ by clicking on the "Who's in Jail" link under "eServices."

Btw, weighing in at 252 lbs. when booked at the Orange County Central Mens Jail, Mr. Whitaker has put on 17 lbs. since he was released from a California prison after serving ten years for rape, which state records indicate involved a child under the age of 14.

01/12/05

Jane Robeson of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office this morning indicated that charges have been filed against John Whitaker for (1) failure to register and (2) failure to update registration. His case number is GAO58268. These charges constitute a "second strike" under California's "Three Strikes" law, according to Ms. Robeson.

Ms. Robeson was unaware that Mr. Whitaker had been arrested in Oregon, but after being quickly filled in on the details, indicated that it would be some time before Mr. Whitaker would face the charges above in LA County due to the murder charge he faces in Orange County.

While it may seem unusual to file charges against someone who may have been out of the state at the time he failed to register with California officials, Ms. Robeson indicated that, while she did not know the details of Mr. Whitaker's parole, it is possible his parole was conditioned on his not leaving the state.

Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 18:07:44 -0800
From: R
Subject: Doubt he'll be singing: John Whitaker Headed "Back to Cali"

Though I doubt he'll be singing LL Cool J's pop tune "Going Back to Cali" http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/llcoolj/goingbacktocali.html , that's exactly what John Whitaker, aka John Whitaker Betances, will soon being doing.

A Multnomah County, Oregon judge today discharged a writ of habeus corpus filed on behalf of John Whitaker, according to Multnomah County District Attorney spokeswoman Chirstina Estes.

This morning's ruling cleared the way for the convicted child rapist, locally-registered sex offender, fugitive sex murder suspect, and buddy of PUSD supe Percy Clark to be remanded to the custody of the Orange County Sheriff for transportation back to California.

Mr. Whitaker, the flamboyant fraud who ran the PUSD D.A.D.S. program at Percy Clark's personal direction, will face murder charges in the 1983 death of a prostitute whose partially-disrobed body was found dumped near an LA Times distribution center.

Mr. Whitaker has also reportedly been linked by DNA evidence to the 1977 sex slaying of a Santa Monica school district clerk, but there is no word as to whether Mr. Whitaker faces charges in that case.

It is my understanding that If he is convicted of both sex slayings, Mr. Whitaker could face the death penalty.

http://pasadenaweekly.com/features/exclusives/webexclusives.html

Pasadena Weekly

December 30, 2004

A long walk home

Concerns are raised following the discovery of five registered sex offenders living within blocks of local schools and parks

By Andre Coleman

The discovery of five convicted sex offenders living in the same house near Cleveland Elementary School has sparked community questions over whether police and school officials should be charged with notifying parents and the community of potential dangers to Pasadena schoolchildren.

According to the state's recently made public Megan's Law sex offender database, http://meganslaw.ca.gov, five registered sex offenders are living together in a house on West Washington Boulevard, less than a mile away from Cleveland Elementary School and only a few blocks from both Robinson and La Pintoresca parks.

News of this sex-offender cluster near area schools and parks comes as Pasadena Unified School District officials fend off criticisms of their handling of a situation in which a registered sex offender and current murder suspect, John Whitaker, achieved a high volunteer position with the district and actually worked for about a year out of an office at school district headquarters on South Hudson Avenue.

Whitaker, who went by the name John Whitaker-Betances, passed himself off as a Vietnam veteran and an Army Special Forces officer, but was really neither. Whitaker, who was a registered as a sex offender under his real name with Pasadena police each of the five years that he lived in the community, was head of the Pasadena chapter of the Dads Are Doing Something, or DADS, program before leaving California for Oregon earlier this year.

In August, Whitaker was arrested in Oregon for failing to register as a sex offender there and was subsequently arrested by Orange County, Calif., detectives at that time and charged with the 1983 strangulation of a prostitute. The victim in that case was found to have a match for Whitaker's DNA under her fingernails, Orange County officials have said. ......

12/22/2004

The state's newly-created Megan's Law website http://www.meganslaw.ca.gov gives a lot of details - scary details about the man Percy Clark called John Whitaker.

John Whitaker (with no middle name) http://snipurl.com/biu9 , is listed as being in "violation of registration requirements since 06/24/2004."

The state lists the reason for his being on the dangerous sex offender list as:

261(2) RAPE BY FORCE

261.2 PRIOR CODE-RAPE BY FORCE

288a(c) ORAL COPULATION WITH PERSON UNDER 14/ETC OR BY FORCE/ETC

The state lists the following as know aliases for Percy Clark's close confidant:

* WHITAKER, JOHN L

* WHITAKER, JOHN LARRY

* WHITAKER, JOHN LARY

* WHITAKER, JOHN LAURANCE

* WHITAKER, JOHN LAURENCE

And the following as distinguishing scars, marks or tattoos:

* GLASSSES

* SCAR ABDOMEN

* SCAR RIGHT CHEEK

* SCAR RIGHT HAND

* SCAR RIGHT WRIST

* SCAR RIGHT FOREARM

"Mr. Whitaker, who ran the PUSD's D.A.D.S. program at Percy CLark's direction without ever having had a background check, has reportedly been linked by DNA evidence to the murders of two Southern California women, and is currently incarcerated in Oregon, where he is fighting fugitive extradition proceedings which seek his return to California on a bench warrant for murder."

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cityBeat/citybeat1.html

Pasadena Weekly

December 9, 2004

W E E K L Y E X C L U S I V E

Sugar DADS

Documents show PUSD gave tens of thousands to DADS program and allowed accused murderer and convicted rapist to use district equipment and organize on-campus activities, all without a background check

By Aaron Harris and Kevin Uhrich

It will now be up to a court to decide the extent of accused killer and convicted rapist John Whitaker's lengthy, violent and convoluted criminal past.

But determining just how deeply Whitaker, a registered sex offender who, while using one of 18 aliases, infiltrated the Pasadena Unified School District administration in the guise of a volunteer mentoring program leader, is a whole other matter.

After poring through a stack of memos released by the district in response to a state Public Records Act request by schools watchdog Rene Amy, it is clear that Whitaker not only had nearly everyone he met bamboozled, but he also had direct access to the superintendent's office, as well as PUSD office equipment, computers and district letterhead stationery.

It's easy to see how one could be fooled. While living in Pasadena from 1998 to last year, Whitaker posed as retired Army Col. John Whitaker Betances, a supposed Vietnam hero, and headed up the DADS, or Dads Are Doing Something, program as a volunteer.

Whitaker was so comfortable in this completely fabricated identity, one in which he regularly wore military fatigues and a black or a green beret, that he assumed the district directorship of the Michigan-based DADS organization and even ran for a seat on the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees.

According to some of the heavily redacted documents released to Amy, officials with the district, who were apparently desperate to cultivate leadership among young adult males in the district, had bought Whitaker's act hook, line and sinker.

"What they did was put [public relations] and looking good ahead of children's safety. There's no question of that in my mind," Amy said after looking over the documents. "And they did so in the face of continuing and growing lies on this guy's part. I mean, his lies got so bad that you had to wonder what the hell these people were thinking down at [district headquarters]." ......

the rest of the article:

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cityBeat/citybeat1.html

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cityBeat/editorial/editorial.html

Pasadena Weekly

December 9, 2004

Editorial

Will they ever learn?

A few years have passed since John Muir High School track coach Clyde Turner was first accused of having sex with two teenage boys, and then eventually found guilty of committing that crime on one of the kids.

That unfortunate episode was more than six years ago, so it's only natural that people would want to forget it, that is if they ever really could.

But there are a few important similarities between the hinky things that Turner did to get prison time and what's happening now in Pasadena — at that very same high school no less, as well as at district headquarters — that people, particularly people in positions of authority, would do well to remember.

One of those things we should remember from then is the leadership vacuum that pervaded the district in Turner's time in the late 1990s. It's hard to imagine a worse administrator than former Superintendent Vera Vignes, who presided over the Turner debacle and a slew of other educational disasters that quite literally destroyed educational opportunities for a whole generation of children.

But current Superintendent Percy Clark is rapidly eclipsing even Vignes in terms of incompetence with his allowing convicted rapist and accused killer John Whitaker to roam the halls of district headquarters at will, allowing nine schools to fail during his tenure, and now suspending three teenage boys for something they admitted to doing and were punished by the courts for doing last January; but first allowing them to finish the football season so the school could get a shot in the CIF playoffs, which it did........

for the rest: http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cityBeat/editorial/editorial.html

"Btw, the likelihood of a tie between Mr. Whitaker-Betances and the Portland schools is strengthened by Mr. Whitaker-Betances oft-repeated claim to the title "Western Regional Administrator for the national DADS FOR EDUCATION program" (quoting from one of the emails provided by PUSD in response to my PRA).

Gotta wonder just how much John Finn, head/founder/owner/C.E.O. of D.A.D.S., knew about Mr. Whitaker-Betances...

Especially since Mr. Finn "earns a living setting up chapters in school districts" http://www.parenting.com/parenting/article/article_general/0,8266,6617,00.html .

It could be bad for business to let a charismatic guy like Mr. Whitaker-Betances go...

Or to have your name blackened by association with a convicted rapist, registered sex offender, and suspected sex slayer.

Of course, Mr. Whitaker-Betances was arrested for *not* registering as a sex offender in Oregon.

So the Portland public schools wouldn't have had any reason to know...

Unlike PUSD, where Percy Clark repeatedly referred to Mr. Whitaker-Betances as "John Whitaker" - the name under which he had registered as a sex offender with local police."

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JOHN WHITAKER BETANCES

Whitaker has been known to have used at least 18 aliases.

OC prosecutor says new murder charge will be filed against Whitaker

DNA Match Leads To Arrest In 1983 Homicide