SANTA ANA, Calif.- A convicted child molester who fled Southern California before his prison sentence and eluded authorities for nearly 30 years by taking on the identity of a long-dead infant has been arrested in Florida, officials said Monday.
George J. England, 60, was arrested by federal agents last week aboard a yacht in Miami, according to local prosecutors. The vessel’s owner was not charged, officials said.
After his conviction in 1977 for molesting three girls, England assumed the identity of Stephen A. Seagoe, who was 11 months old when he died of undetermined causes in 1946 in Santa Barbara County, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said.
England was caught after a daughter he informally adopted in Vietnam, and also allegedly molested, alerted a neighbor who happened to be an FBI agent, Rackauckas said.
The daughter, whose name was not disclosed, hadn’t seen England since 1995 but told the agent she had recently learned he had been spotted in the West Palm Beach, Fla., area.
She was 5 when England allegedly brought her from Vietnam in 1972 to live with him, said Clint McCall, an investigator for the district attorney’s office. England served in Vietnam with the Army from 1963 to 1966, McCall said.
An Orange County jury convicted him in 1977 of molesting three of his daughter’s playmates in a motor home in Costa Mesa.
“He was using the girl to lure other little girls in the neighborhood,” Rackauckas said.
A judge released him to get his affairs in order before he was to begin serving a prison sentence of at least six years. He fled instead, adopted the new identity and continued to molest the Vietnamese girl until her late teens, McCall said. Over the years, McCall said, the two visited Vietnam, India and Guam.
England, who is being held in Florida, will be returned to California to serve his prison sentence. He also faces federal charges of obtaining a passport under a false name, McCall said.
The name of England’s attorney was not immediately available.