Co-Worker Says Perez Needed Help With Case -- Detective Says Wenatchee Sex Case Was `Complex'

A co-worker of Robert Perez, the lead detective in the Wenatchee child sex-rings case, testified that he was so disturbed about the increasing size and complexity of the criminal investigation that he asked the police chief to assign someone to help Perez.

"I was concerned," Wenatchee police Detective Mike Magnotti said yesterday, because "the case was so complex and convoluted" that he felt Perez needed immediate help.

Later in the day, Connie Roberson, wife and co-plaintiff of Pastor Robert "Roby" Roberson, testified under intense cross-examination that her oldest daughter (now 20) had written her to tell her she'd been raped.

The letter - which Roberson kept on her nightstand in her bedroom - apparently did not say who raped her, or when it happened. And when asked about the letter and whether she had concerns about it, Roberson said her daughter told her she was depressed and made it all up.

But the timing of the testimony - which followed several days of intense scrutiny of Perez's tactics and investigative methods, an interrogation that clearly kept the defendants on the defensive - may have caused jurors to shift their focus onto the plaintiffs.

Earlier, it was Perez and his co-defendants who were the focus.

Magnotti, who preceded Perez as the sex-crimes investigator for the Wenatcheee Police Department, said he became unexpectedly involved in the case in February 1995, shortly after complaints were filed against Perez about how he interviewed a teenage witness.

Magnotti told jurors a videotape was given to him that had a girl who'd been interviewed by Perez alleging that he had interviewed her five hours without breaks and without food or water.

The girl - a daughter of one of the plaintiffs in the $100 million civil suit - also accused Perez in the videotape of trying to browbeat her into admitting she had been sexually abused, and telling her he thought she was a liar.

The man who gave Magnotti the tape, former Wenatchee police Officer Robert Kincaid, was insistent that Perez's interview tactics warranted a suspension. But Magnotti said that after he investigated the claims, he thought differently.

"I didn't feel that the specific allegations Mr. Kincaid made had been vindicated by the tapes," Magnotti told jurors. But he stopped short of saying there were were no problems.

In fact, he said, he wrote a memo to Wenatchee Police Chief Ken Badgley on Feb. 20, 1995, urging him to provide Perez with immediate help. Two months later, he said, he was reassigned to assist Perez for three weeks.

Perez, a 15-year veteran of the Wenatchee Police Department, is one of several defendants named in a $100 million lawsuit over the handling of the sex-rings investigation. The suit, filed by the Robersons, also names the city of Wenatchee, Police Chief Badgley, the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), a private therapist, Douglas County Sheriff Dan LaRoche and two other detectives.

The Robersons, who were criminally charged, were acquitted in the child-abuse investigations and are among four former sex-ring defendants who filed the civil-rights lawsuit.