Hearing for serial rapist delayed

At some point during his 16 years behind bars, it's possible that serial rapist Bob Lee Boog Jr. asked that a federal hold on him be resolved.

If so, the request may have some impact on U.S. Magistrate Samuel Alba's decision on whether to release Boog pending a Dec. 1 hearing for a decades-old parole violation.

Boog, once known as the Capitol Hill rapist, was paroled Tuesday from the Utah State Prison. However, he was immediately taken into federal custody and relocated to the Weber County Jail. Federal prosecutors have asked that he remain in custody until the hearing before U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins.

In 1987, Jenkins sentenced Boog to four years in prison for using a telephone to arrange a drug deal. However, Jenkins stayed the prison sentence and placed Boog on five years probation instead. One of the conditions of probation was not to have any further violations of the law, a provision Boog violated by raping at least a dozen women at knifepoint in the Capitol Hill area between 1985 and 1987.

Boog pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated sexual assault and was sentenced in March 1998 to a minimum of 10 years in prison.

Boog, 48, is now faced with serving the entire original four-year prison sentence, or any portion thereof, that Jenkins decides is necessary.

However, Alba said Friday that it appears Boog previously requested that the federal matter be resolved. Legally, Alba said, Boog would have been entitled to a hearing at that time.

Alba continued Friday's detention hearing until this week to allow the U.S. Attorney's Office for Utah to look into the matter.

Richard Lambert, criminal division chief for the U.S. Attorney's Office, said he was unaware of any request from Boog in the past 16 years. Lambert said he will research the issue. He said he was unsure what it will mean if there, in fact, had been one.

"The legal significance . . . is something that we'll have to see," he said.

It is unclear why Alba believes Boog may have made a request to have his federal detainer waived. Boog's court-appointed defense attorney, Viviana Ramirez, said Friday she wasn't positive Boog had ever made a request.

If Alba orders that Boog be freed from custody pending the Dec. 1 hearing, he will likely not be immediately released into the community. The state Board of Pardons and Parole ordered Boog to live at a halfway house for the next 12 to 18 months for additional sex-offender counseling.

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E-mail: awelling@desnews.com