Molester Led Police to Youth’s Remains

NEWPORT BEACH — The convicted child molester who was the subject of fliers distributed by police here Monday is the same man who in 1990 told police he discovered the bones of a Costa Mesa teen while hiking in Riverside County, officials said Tuesday.

Seven years ago, James Lee Crummel, 53, told police he found the skeletal remains of a boy in a burned forest area off the Ortega Highway, according to Riverside County Sheriff’s spokesman Mark Lohman.

The bones sat in police storage until last November when forensic anthropologists identified them as the charred remains of James “Jamie” Trotter, a 13-year-old who disappeared on his way to a Costa Mesa bus stop on April 19, 1979.

Riverside investigators “only found out recently” that the same man who contacted them about finding the bones was a sex offender convicted in three states since 1962 who has targeted young boys as his victims, Lohman said.

Lohman said Crummel is not officially a suspect in the Trotter case.

“I’m just going to say that we’ve talked to him,” he said.

In the years after Trotter’s disappearance, investigators have speculated that the blond, blue-eyed youth might have been a victim of serial killer William Bonin, who was convicted of 14 murders with similar circumstances in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

Bonin, who eventually confessed to each of his killings, was executed by lethal injection last year. Trotter’s disappearance preceded Bonin’s first confirmed slaying by months.

Crummel was the subject of a flier distributed Monday afternoon by police throughout the Newport Crest condominium complex, which is near Ticonderoga Street and Superior Avenue. The flier, with Crummel’s criminal history and photo, was meant to inform residents that a high-risk sex offender was living in their midst, police said.

The flier made Crummel the third Orange County sex offender to have his whereabouts publicized under the controversial Megan’s Law, named for a slain New Jersey girl. A convicted molester in her neighborhood is now on trial for her death.

The fliers list Crummel’s convictions as multiple counts of child molestation, kidnapping and sex perversions, along with one count of aggravated assault and battery on a child. He targets boys ages 9 to 16, the flier states.

Crummel, who has used the alias Jimmy Lee Savage, is not currently on parole or probation, according to Newport Beach Police Sgt. John Desmond.

Police officials will be available at 7 tonight to answer questions from the community regarding Megan’s Law, Crummel and other issues at a meeting in City Council chambers.