A Squirrel Hill man accused of raping an 11-year-old girl in Greenfield likely should have registered as a sex offender in Pennsylvania because he spent 12 years in an Oklahoma prison for sexual assaults, police said Tuesday.
Clyde E. Haidle, 46, faces a preliminary hearing today in Pittsburgh Municipal Court on charges he grabbed a girl walking home from school last week and assaulted her in an abandoned home on Ivondale Street.
Eddie Wyant, the district attorney for Ottawa County, Okla., said at least one of Haidle's victims in the mid-1980s was younger than 16. Haidle served two stints in Oklahoma prisons between 1986 and 1999 for convictions of rape, robbery, concealing stolen property, attempted rape and sodomy, an Oklahoma prison official said.
Despite his convictions he did not register as a sex offender in either state.
Pennsylvania's Megan's Law requires people convicted of sex crimes to register with Pennsylvania State Police, which publishes names on a Web site. Oklahoma requires people to register as sex offenders if their convictions came after November 1989. Haidle's convictions were in 1986 and 1987.
Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Douglas Grimes, the Megan's Law section commander, said preliminary indications are that Haidle should have registered here when he moved to this state.
"Because he wasn't required to register in Oklahoma, he probably wasn't aware of the (Pennsylvania) laws," said Grimes, who emphasized that investigators would have to investigate when Haidle came to Pennsylvania to determine which Megan's Law would apply, if any.
The law has changed over the past several years.
"But ignorance is no excuse," Grimes said. "It's incumbent upon him to check and see. Registration of sex offenders is largely self-reported."
Haidle is in the Allegheny County Jail on charges of rape, false imprisonment and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. It is unclear whether he has a lawyer.
"My feeling is that some little girl was victimized and that's terrible," Wyant said. "This guy apparently slipped under that law."
Haidle raped and robbed a woman at knifepoint in 1987. According to court records, he "used force and violence" and threatened "great bodily harm" to the victim if she resisted while he raped her. In the sexual assault a year earlier, Haidle was unable to complete the rape because of the victim's age and size, court records state.
Haidle was convicted in 1987 of concealing stolen property of four guns — two semiautomatic rifles, a shotgun and a Winchester bolt-action rifle with a scope.
Haidle served about nine months in prison of a two-year sentence before he got out in February 1987. Three months later in May, he pleaded guilty to rape and was sentenced to 25 years. He served about 11 1/2 years of that sentence before he was released in 1999, a prison official said.
Pittsburgh police Sgt. Larry Scirotto said investigators became aware of Haidle's criminal history over the weekend. He said the information has not changed their investigation.
Police said Haidle was drinking on the porch of the abandoned house Thursday a few blocks from his home when he saw the victim, whom he recognized from the neighborhood. The girl described his clothing and appearance to police, who searched the neighborhood and found Haidle hiding beneath floorboards in a trap door on the second floor of his home.
.........Sarah Tofte
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