Canadian rape suspect back in Carson City

A convicted sex offender released from a Canadian jail this week after a decades-old child rape charge was dismissed on a technicality is back in Carson City.

Wilbur James Ventling, 64, registered with the Carson City Sheriff's Department on Thursday.

Ventling, waiting in the Sheriff's Department to have his photograph and fingerprints taken as part of his lifetime supervision as a sex offender in Nevada, declined to comment about his return to the capital city.

In October 2007, Ventling was arrested outside his August Drive home on a Canadian warrant charging him with a 1979 rape of a 9-year-old girl in Vernon, British Columbia.

After nearly two years in custody, a Canadian judge found Sept. 18 that Ventling's arrest 10 years after his release from a U.S. prison violated his Canadian rights.

Canadian investigators said in U.S. court documents that Ventling was a suspect in a series of child rapes in Calgary as well as the Vernon rape. He had been arrested in 1979 in connection with the Calgary rapes, but a day later escaped from a psychiatric hospital where he was being held, officials said.

A month later, Ventling was arrested in Las Vegas for the sexual assault of a friend's daughter. He was ultimately convicted of that charge and sentenced to serve 30 years in prison.

After 17 years, Ventling was released from prison and lived in Carson City with his wife and daughter, earning a living as a hairdresser at an elder care facility and selling leather goods online.

"This guy is a poster child for getting off on a technicality, " said Carson City Detective Bob Motamenpour. Motamenpour aided the Canadian authorities in arresting Ventling and had been prepared to leave for Canada to testify in the trial, which would have started next week.