Encinitas

A San Diego Juvenile Court judge Tuesday ordered authorities to release from custody an Escondido teen-ager charged with helping to plot the slaying of the estranged husband of a high-school teacher’s aide.

Judge Sheridan Reed allowed Frank (Soddy) Rodriguez, 16, to leave the county’s juvenile detention facility but placed him under house arrest at the home of his mother.

The boy is suspected of helping to solicit the murder of Robert (Wayne) Pearce, who was slain outside his Cardiff apartment Jan. 31. His wife, popular Orange Glen High School teacher’s aide Roberta Pearce, is charged with masterminding a plot that ended in the 40-year-old construction worker’s death.

Rodriguez was implicated in testimony last week at Pearce’s preliminary hearing in Vista Municipal Court by two other teen-agers, Anthony Pilato and Isaac Hill, both 15, who have pleaded guilty to killing Wayne Pearce with a kitchen knife and hatchet.

Under the judge’s ruling, Rodriguez will be subject to daily spot checks by probation officers and will probably be required to take a home correspondence course to keep up with his school work, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Carlos Armour, the chief prosecutor in the case.

Rodriguez, who has been described in court as the lover of Roberta Pearce in the weeks before her husband was slain, faces a pretrial hearing May 11.