DISTRICT ATTORNEY TONY RACKAUCKAS ANNOUNCES NEW WEBSITE
Thank you for joining us here today as we enlist the public’s help in finding some of Orange County’s worst and most wanted criminals. We will also be unveiling our new website which will give the public, especially crime victims, a way to better understand the criminal justice system and to find resources that can help them.
Today, we are enlisting millions of pairs of eyes and ears to help capture and bring to justice criminals who are on the run, living and breathing freedom, even though they have long since earned their place in prison. Their freedom represents danger to our community. If you are a fugitive, you need to know that you can’t hide forever. Thanks to modern technology and the broad scope of the internet, we can now enlist a mass of people who will help us look under every rock until you are caught.
We know that publicizing these faces work. You may have heard that Oprah recently publicized her most wanted sexual predators. In just two days, two child molesters were apprehended. We hope to do the same. The truth is, law enforcement officers are working hard every day to help capture criminals. The truth is, there is not enough time in a day. The crooks out number the cops. It is time that we say enough is enough. They live down the street from you. They might be your co-workers. We need more media, John Walsh, Oprah. We need citizens. We need to out number them. We don’t need to have more victims because these people are not caught. These fugitives are not on the run in a vacuum. Their associates are helping them. People are seeing these faces every day.
We ask the members of the public to click onto our website and call their local police department if they have any information as to their whereabouts. On our website, you will see their pictures, information about the crime, and who they should contact. Obviously, we caution the public that fugitives should be considered dangerous, and we ask you to call the police and not take the law into your own hands.
Unfortunately, we have many more deserving candidates than we have room on our initial ten, but we will be updating the webpage regularly and adding new wanted criminals to our website. We will also keep the public informed when a defendant is apprehended. For now, let’s look at these ten defendants. They were nominated by prosecutors and investigators. We tried to pick a variety of types of cases as initial examples.
Wanted: Angel Vergada Jr., for murder, robbery, kidnapping and association with a gang. Vergada has not been seen since December 2002. Vergada is a member of a Santa Ana gang and wanted for murdering a rival gang member. His co-defendant, Jose Velasquez has already been tried and convicted of murder.
Wanted: The Orange Police Department has been looking for James Lawrence Diamond since 1997 for molesting a 5-year-old female relative. He has been charged with seven counts of lewd acts upon a child under the age of 14. He has not been seen since the day he came to the police department and left before the police could interview him on September 22, 1997.