U.S Indicts Triple Slayer in Kidnaping After Escape

An escaped triple murderer was indicted Friday for allegedly kidnaping an Arizona family and molesting the 11-year-old daughter before he was recaptured last week in Orange County.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles charged James Neal Kinslow, 27, with 11 counts, five on kidnaping, in the July 29 gunpoint abduction of William Blades, his wife and three children from their Flagstaff home.

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner said Kinslow molested the youngest child in Orange County after he left the other four family members bound and gagged in a Barstow motel room.

“There are few federal crimes as violent, as egregious and repugnant as these,” Bonner said.

Bonner said he plans to seek the maximum punishment of life imprisonment for each of the kidnaping counts and ask that Kinslow not be eligible for parole.

Kinslow, one of seven inmates who escaped from a New Mexico prison on July 4, allegedly forced the Blades to drive him to Barstow, then took the 11-year-old girl with him to Garden Grove, where he left her wandering the streets with a blanket.

Acting on information provided by the girl, Garden Grove police and FBI agents captured Kinslow and two of the other escapees July 30 at a trailer park in the Orange County city.

The other four escapees were captured within eight days of the breakout, in which a prison guard was killed.

It was the second escape for Kinslow, who began serving a life sentence in 1978 for killing a 38-year-old woman and her two daughters. He fled from a Wyoming prison, where he had been sent after an outbreak of prison riots in New Mexico, and was captured 30 days later.

“There are vicious and horrid crimes that cannot be prevented, but in this instance, I cannot help but believe that society and the criminal justice system has failed the Blades family,” Bonner said. “Good, law-abiding citizens like the Blades have the right to live their lives free from violent crime and the threat of violent crimes.”

Bonner criticized Congress for eliminating capital punishment in cases where kidnaping results in serious bodily injury.

Arraignment for Kinslow was scheduled for Aug. 24. In addition to kidnaping, he is charged with four counts of illegal use of weapons, and one count each of transporting a minor for sexual purposes and transporting a stolen vehicle between states.