Jul 3, 2008

Sexual assault case continues

Judge: Police had sufficient evidence to arrest suspect

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

A Santa Clara County judge Wednesday rejected a defense attorney's argument that police did not have grounds to arrest a Palo Alto sexual assault suspect.

Judge Thang Nguyen Barrett denied the attorney's motion to dismiss the case, ruling that police had good reason to arrest Todd David Burpee, 21, a 2006 Palo Alto High School graduate suspected of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 17-year-old Gunn High School student in October.

"The court finds more than sufficient probable cause to arrest him," Barrett concluded after a five-hour court session in which Deputy District Attorney James Leonard called nine Palo Alto police officers to testify.

Daniel Olmos, Burpee's attorney, argued throughout the day's hearing that while Palo Alto police officers may have had the necessary "reasonable suspicion" to detain Burpee, they did not have the "probable cause" legally required to arrest him.

But the nine officers Leonard called to the stand recounted a long list of clues that led to Burpee's arrest in the car of his fiancee, Sara Dahlen, on the night of Nov. 1, 2007.

Palo Alto police Officer Eric Bulatao testified that he had first seen Burpee on Oct. 29, the day before the attack, when he noticed him in a gold Oldsmobile with a broken window. The car was parked near the apartment complex at 565 Arastradero Road where the officer had been called on a different matter to speak with Nelia Quizon, who told him Burpee used to live there and continued to loiter around, giving her "the creeps."

When Bulatao asked dispatch officers to run a check on the Oldsmobile's license plate, dispatch mistakenly typed in the wrong license plate number. As a result, the car description that dispatchers provided did not match that of the gold four-door sedan, Bulatao said.

In cross-examination, Olmos seized on the fact that Bulatao waited a full 24 hours after seeing a police sketch of the suspect before alerting other officers that he had an idea who it could be.

"When you first saw the sketch, were you unsure because it didn't look like the sketch or because the car information didn't seem to match up?" Leonard asked.

"Because of the car information," Bulatao answered.

He became more certain of his hunch after the Oct. 30 attack, which occurred nearby at 535 Arastradero Road. The next day, Quizon told him she had seen a tan four-door sedan with a broken window driving "fast" away from the neighborhood between 3 and 4 p.m. on the day of the attack, Bulatao said.

Later, officers also found the backpack the victim dropped across the street from 550 North Fair Oaks, a Sunnyvale apartment complex where Burpee was living with Dahlen, Detective Cori Preheim testified. The victim's blue, flower-printed cell phone was also discovered in a parking lot adjacent to the apartment complex, Agent Adrienne Moore explained.

And Agent April Wagner said the victim told her right after the abduction that her attacker had been talking to someone named "Sarah" while she was in his car.

All of those clues leading to Dahlen, previously identified as Burpee's fiancee in a police report written two months earlier on a theft case, gave police reason to follow Dahlen the night of Nov. 1, when Burpee was arrested from her car, Leonard argued.

Barrett agreed, ruling that police had enough evidence to arrest Burpee and get his valid consent to search his home and car.
Burpee appears next in court for the start of his jury trial on Oct. 20.



E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.