Child molester serving life term on trial again

An Everett man who already is serving one life prison sentence for sex crimes against children went on trial Tuesday accused of four more crimes. A prosecutor hopes that a conviction will net Jamie Lloyd Wallin a second life term without possibility of release.

Wallin is accused of repeatedly having sexual contact with the 9-year-old daughter of a friend in 2002 and 2003. He’s charged with two counts of first-degree child rape and two counts of first-degree child molestation.

In May, Wallin was convicted of 11 sex counts involving girls 7, 9 and 11. He and his girlfriend, Florena Aurelia Romero, 22, of Bothell took the children on a photo-shooting expedition at a park, swam in the nude, and later went to an apartment where they had sex in front of the children.

Romero was convicted of eight sex counts and is serving a 10-year prison term. Wallin was sentenced to life.

On Tuesday deputy prosecutor Ed Stemler told a Snoho­mish County Superior Court jury that Wallin encountered a high school friend who had children, and remained in contact with her. He visited her home in Marysville and then in Everett, Stemler said.

The evidence will show that Wallin slipped into her eldest child’s bedroom and attacked her, sometimes taking photos, Stemler said.

Defense lawyer Anthony Howard told the jury that the girl’s story of what happened changed when she talked with a defense investigator, and it is not reliable. Nobody who lived at the girl’s home had a suspicion of anything going on with the girl, Howard said.

It will be up to jurors to judge the credibility of witnesses, Howard said.

“At the end of this case you will find there is more than a reasonable doubt and you will acquit Mr. Wallin,” Howard said.

Stemler told jurors that Wallin confessed to two other child molesters, who will testify.

The girl, now 14, didn’t say anything until last year when police were investigating her sexual activity with her 22-year-old boyfriend, Stemler said.

Outside court, Stemler said he’s pursuing a second life term for Wallin because the defendant preys on young girls and he wants to do everything in his power to make sure Wallin is never released from prison.

Wallin has a sordid past.

He was convicted of child molestation in 1994 and served more than four years in prison after failing in a treatment program designed to help him control deviant urges.

In 2003, he was again charged with child molestation after state corrections officials searched his laptop computer and discovered “hundreds, if not thousands” of photographs of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

A judge in that case sentenced him to life without parole as a persistent offender, but the state Court of Appeals overturned the conviction and dismissed the case because of an improper search of the computer.

Within nine months of his release from prison, Wallin molested the three girls in the case that ended in the May conviction.

Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or jhaley@heraldnet.com.