The Mexican Navy captured former Alaska halfway house magnate Bill Weimar on a fugitive warrant Saturday night and returned him to the United States to answer charges that he sexually assaulted a six-year-old girl, the Sarasota County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office said Sunday.
Weimar, 70, had been living in Sarasota, Fla., where he owned a 60-foot luxury cabin cruiser. It couldn’t immediately be determined if he used the boat to flee the United States.
The sheriff’s office said in a prepared statement that it got help from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Coast Guard, which tracked Weimar to Havana, from where extradition would have been difficult if not impossible. From there, U.S. authorities learned he was planning to continue on to Mexico, the sheriff’s office said.
Sheriff’s investigators contacted the U.S. Marshals Service office and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, which asked the Mexican Navy for assistance.
“Weimar was captured last night in Cancun, Mexico, and transported to Texas today, where he will await extradition to Florida,” the sheriff’s office said.
Sarasota Sheriff Tom Knight praised the “outstanding inter-agency cooperation that contributed to the successful resolution of what was ultimately an international manhunt.”
The sheriff’s office issued an arrest warrant naming Weimar on Jan. 24 and detectives there have been looking for him ever since. He’s accused of sexual battery on a six-year-old, a capital crime that carries a potential life sentence.
According to an affidavit by a sheriff’s detective, Weimar babysat the child in August. The mother contacted authorities in the last month or so when she noticed the girl playing sex games with Barbie and Ken dolls and asked her why. The girl said Weimar asked him to perform fellatio, and she did.
The girl told her mother that Weimar was "mean," the detective said.
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