Alleged Coachella Valley serial rapist pleads not guilty
A 46-year-old Indio man accused in a series of violent sexual assaults against three women in the Coachella Valley pleaded not guilty this afternoon to 16 felony charges, including rape, kidnapping, assault and false imprisonment.
Daniel Candelario Delgadillo, who is charged in two sexual assaults in 2006 and one in 2014, was arrested Monday night near the Haugen Lehmann offramp off Interstate 10 in Whitewater, according to county jail records. He was charged last week and following his arrest, was booked into the county jail in Indio in lieu of $3 million bail.
Delgadillo was initially charged a decade ago with the rapes of the two 2006 victims, but charges were dismissed in June 2008. The criminal complaint alleged the attacks occurred about five months apart and that a knife was used in one of the assaults.
In the 2014 case, Delgadillo is accused of sexually assaulting a woman, then driving her up a mountainside, where she leapt from Delgadillo’s moving vehicle because she believed he “was taking her up the mountain to kill her,” according to an arrest warrant declaration.
The document alleges he initially gave the woman a ride from a Palm Springs bus stop to a residence in either Palm Desert or Rancho Mirage, then sexually assaulted, punched and choked her before the drive up the mountain. Though a suspect description was provided to investigators, the house where the alleged assault occurred could not be located at the time, the declaration states.
For unknown reasons, the victim’s sexual assault kit was also not analyzed for more than a year after the alleged assault occurred, but DNA results received in March 2016 linked Delgadillo to the crime, according to the declaration. Court documents state that while authorities investigated the 2014 incident, Delgadillo was found to be a suspect in four other sexual assaults across the Coachella Valley, including cases investigated by the Indio, Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs police departments and the sheriff’s Palm Desert station.
He’s due back in court Oct. 9 for a felony settlement conference.
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