Jury finds Wolfenbarger still violent predator

A man who abducted and raped a 6-year-old Yuba County girl in 1987 should still be considered a sexually violent predator, Yuba County jurors decided Friday.

Jim Dean Wolfenbarger has completed his prison sentence for the crime, but the jury's verdict means he will be returned to Coalinga State Hospital for an indefinite period "until he is qualified to be released," said Deputy District Attorney Brad Enos.

Jurors deliberated Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. The hearing lasted three weeks. A ruling in Wolfenbarger's favor would have meant his immediate release.

The Yuba County District Attorney's office petitioned the court to keep Wolfenbarger confined.

The jury's decision left Wolfenbarger's relatives in tears.

"I just wish he'd had the opportunity to show he's changed," said Wolfenbarger's sister, Leah, who did not give her last name.

Her brother's crime was unforgivable, Leah said, "but that's not all a person is."

Wolfenbarger "has truly changed," she said, but being released is the only way he can prove it, she said.

To see Wolfenbarger go from "the lowest depth" to a rehabilitated life of freedom would be "a thing of beauty," she said.

"Our hearts truly go out to the victim," said Leah, who shook hands with jurors.

Wolfenbarger abducted the girl just 37 days after completing a prison sentence for abducting, raping and sodomizing a woman cab driver from Reno, Nev.

Wolfenbarger, a Jehovah's Witness, said he underwent a gradual religious conversion while in prison. But Enos said he did not believe Wolfenbarger has truly changed, pointing to his failure to complete a program for sexual offenders while behind bars.

In a lengthy relapse prevention plan that Wolfenbarger wrote while at Coalinga State Hospital, he argued that he would have a support network of Jehovah's Witnesses on the outside.

But the plan only proves that Wolfenbarger "can talk and talk," said Enos, quoting a psychologist who testified for the District Attorney's Office.

A juror, Terry Stewart of Plumas Lake, said the panel "didn't see enough of an attempt at reform."

"The evidence was clear," he said. It wasn't just the girl's abduction that worked against Wolfenbarger, "it was all the evidence — and there was so much of it," said Stewart.