A serial child molester freed in Orange County last week from a life sentence has resurfaced in Washington state, where authorities say he once cruised for victims -- and where he will be required to register as a serious sex offender deemed likely to repeat his crimes.
Edward Harvey Stokes, who once said to a therapist that he had molested more than 200 victims and felt like a monster, applied for a new Washington driver's license using a Vancouver address three days after his April 7 release from the Orange County Jail, according to sheriff's officials in King County, Wash.
In a letter he sent to members of his defense team in the fall, Stokes had promised he would waste little time getting back to his home state.
He wrote the letter after learning that he had successfully appealed the life sentence imposed after he was convicted in California of molesting Blue Karak, a 16-year-old runaway he had met in Seattle. Stokes' release came several months later, after the California Supreme Court declined to consider overturning the appellate ruling.
In the letter, provided Thursday to The Times by a former member of his legal team, Stokes derided California as un-American and alleged that officials had hidden a key police report.
The belated disclosure of that report, which surfaced after Karak committed suicide, led the state 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana to overturn his conviction in the fall. The court found that Stokes was denied his constitutional right to cross-examine his accuser.
Letter From Prison
"If all goes well, I will be far from California.... No more CDC [California Department of Corrections], Orange County Superior Court or 'Third World Nation of California,' as I will be returning to the real world of the United States where the United States Constitution still holds meaning," he wrote Dec. 1 in a two-page letter from Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, Calif.
The letter was provided by Andrew Exler, a longtime activist for inmates who is best known for getting Disneyland's ban on same-sex dancing overturned in the 1980s. Exler, who now legally goes by the single name Crusader, worked as a court-appointed paralegal when Stokes was representing himself in 1998. He said he had a falling out with Stokes over what he considered endless demands, and asked the judge to be removed from the case. Stokes eventually came into an inheritance and hired private attorneys.
