Community Corner

More Charges Filed Against Professional Clown Accused of Raping 12-Year-Old Girl

The Orange County district attorney's office filed additional charges today against Jose Guadalupe Jimenez. He is being held on $1 million bail.

A professional clown arrested last week in Newport Beach for the alleged kidnap and rape of a 12-year-old girl in 2002 was scheduled to be arraigned today and now faces additional charges, the Orange County district attorney’s office reported.

Jose Guadalupe Jimenez, 41, of Anaheim, was taken into custody Friday by Fullerton police on a warrant alleging two felony counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor, City News Service reported. Today the district attorney’s office filed more charges against Jimenez, an additional felony count of forcible lewd act upon a child under 14 and one felony count of aggravated sexual assault of a child. He is currently being held on $1-million bail. If convicted on all counts, he faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in state prison. 

Jimenez, who has been a professional clown for the last nine years and goes by the moniker "El Tin Larin,'' is accused of grabbing the girl at Lemon Street and Commonwealth Avenue in Fullerton just before midnight on Jan. 19, 2002, and driving her to a nearby school parking lot, where he raped her while wearing a clown mask and makeup, according to Fullerton police Sgt. Andrew Goodrich.

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Jimenez later took the girl to a motel on Harbor Boulevard and molested her again, but the girl was able to escape when he left the car to talk to the motel clerk, Goodrich said. 

The case went cold for years, but investigators got a break when Jimenez was arrested in 2010 for corporal injury on a child and a DNA sample was collected, Goodrich said. That led to a DNA match in February to the evidence in the rape case, he said. 

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Investigators said there may be more victims and encourage anyone with information about Jimenez to call Detective Kathryn Hamel of the Fullerton Police Department at (714) 738-5327, or Supervising District Attorney Investigator Lou Gutierrez at (714) 347-8794.

City News Service contributed to this report.


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