Sex Offender, Suspected in Burbank Rape, Hangs Himself in Jail

BURBANK — A man who jumped parole in Oregon for sexual assault on a child and was then arrested on charges of raping an 11-year-old Burbank girl hanged himself in his jail cell, city and county authorities said Wednesday.

Burbank police said they tried to send Peter Kurges, 28, back to Oregon for parole violations before the alleged Burbank rape occurred but were turned down by Oregon authorities.

Kurges hanged himself with a bedsheet at the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail late Tuesday afternoon, shortly after jailers lifted a suicide watch that was ordered after an earlier attempt to kill himself, police said.

“It’s a tragedy all the way around,” said Burbank Councilman Ted McConkey, who monitored the case. “It ended in tragedy for the young lady and for him.”

Authorities said Kurges had attempted suicide in a holding cell at the Burbank courthouse shortly after his arrest in December, but a suicide watch on him in the county jail’s psychiatric unit had recently been canceled.

“As far as I know, this was the first day he was not on suicide watch,” said Burbank Police Det. Craig Ratliff.

Ratliff said he visited Kurges in jail last week while Kurges was under suicide watch. “He probably convinced somebody that he was not going to hurt himself and got himself out of that situation.”

Sheriff’s Department officials said Wednesday they could not explain why the suicide watch was lifted.

Kurges, a transient, faced 74 years in prison if convicted on charges of kidnapping, rape and oral copulation in the Dec. 12 assault on a girl as she walked home from school. He was scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Burbank Municipal Court on Jan. 23.

The case led outraged local and state officials to seek reforms in laws governing registration of sex offenders and extradition of prisoners.

State Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said Wednesday that he is working with legislative lawyers to determine the constitutionality of giving communities the power to return sex offenders with outstanding warrants in other states to those states.

“The problem I see, among others, is that California and communities like Burbank have no recourse when sex offenders come from someplace else,” he said. “I think the situation is intolerable.”

In addition, Schiff and others said, the state’s laws requiring sex offenders to register in the communities where they live may need to be made stricter for transients. Current state law requires sex offenders to register in a municipality if they intend to spend at least five days there, officials said.

“There may be a hole in that law that needs to be plugged,” Schiff said. “They may move more than 100 times in that year and they’re only required to register once.”

Kurges was arrested in 1993 in Medford, Ore., and charged with rape and sexual abuse of a 5-year-old girl. He pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of second-degree sexual abuse and was sentenced to six months in jail, said Perrin Damon, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Corrections.

Upon his release, Kurges was placed on “post-prison supervision,” a form of parole, through July 2000, she said.

Damon said Kurges had a long criminal record in Oregon and had been continually under the jurisdiction of the criminal-justice system since 1992. On March 21, Kurges failed to show up for a meeting with his parole officer and an arrest warrant was issued by the Oregon state parole board.

On Nov. 20, about three weeks before he was arrested on the Burbank rape charge, Burbank police arrested Kurges for public drunkenness. After Kurges blurted out to officers that he was “wanted in Oregon,” police contacted Oregon authorities and learned he was a sex offender and that he had absconded on his parole, said Chief David Newsham.

But Burbank officials said authorities in Oregon declined to extradite Kurges back to their state for violating his parole. In addition, the warrant issued in Oregon for his arrest was valid only if he was picked up by authorities in that state. Therefore, Burbank police said, their hands were tied.

“We were caught between a legal rock and a hard place,” Ratliff said. “We didn’t want to let him go, but we had no legal authority to hold him. He was on probation for a sex offense, but he was not suspected of any sexual assaults in our area.”

Officials at the Oregon parole board did not return telephone calls for comment Wednesday.

Burbank police say the rape occurred at about 5 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon. The girl, who had missed a school bus, was walking home alone when Kurges approached her at the corner of Alameda Avenue and Keystone Street. He threatened to kill her if she did not come with him, Ratliff said, and took her behind a row of bushes and sexually assaulted her for more than an hour.

After the attack, the girl went to a local restaurant and asked for help. Kurges was arrested just a few minutes later, when police found him walking in the neighborhood.

During the course of their investigation, Ratliff said Burbank police were contacted by authorities in Las Vegas about an April 1996 rape of an 18-year-old woman there, and the two departments had been exchanging information in hopes of tying Kurges to that crime.

“[Kurges] was documented as being in Las Vegas at the time of that incident, and the circumstances surrounding the crime were virtually identical to what happened here in Burbank,” Ratliff said.

Hernandez is a Times staff writer and Ryfle is a correspondent.