Two plead innocent to charges of keeping sex slave

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Two men have pleaded innocent to charges they kept a transient as a sex slave in their middle-class home.

Trial was set for Oct. 28 for Michael Aaron Wilson, 45, and William Joseph Fritsch, 22, both of Brush Prairie, who appeared Wednesday in Clark County Superior Court to face charges of rape, kidnapping and assault. Defense lawyers Gerry Wear and Tom Phelan said they would request separate trials.

Prosecutors say the two met a 47-year-old Seattle transient online, offered him a bus ticket to Vancouver, then imprisoned and raped him repeatedly for eight days.

The man ran to a neighbor's house for help Thursday evening with his legs and hands shackled.

Wilson, who maintains a Web site for devotees of sadomasochistic sex, claims the sex was consensual, his lawyer said.

On the Web site, Wilson said he specializes in bondage, "intense medical scenes," torture and prison punishments.

Wear expressed concern about pretrial publicity, and Judge John Wulle sealed search documents detailing the basis for a search of the men's home and listing what was found.

A hearing on whether the warrant should remain sealed was set for 8:30 a.m. Friday. Prosecutors had expressed concern that the man whose complaint led to the charges -- the Seattle transient -- might leave the area.

On Wednesday, however, Deputy Prosecutor Tom Duffy said the man has secured housing through social service organizations. "He has assured me he intends to cooperate," Duffy said.

Doesn't this eerily remind you of Leonard Lake & Charles Ng?

October 26, 1998 - Charles Ng - The trial of Charles Ng, California's most notorious non-convicted killer, began
with the prosecution showing a videotape of Mr. Ng -- who was sporting a stun belt during his court appearance --
cutting away the shirt and bra of a bound woman identified as Brenda O'Connor. Off camera, Leonard
Lake, Ng's friend and accomplice, tells her she has a choice: cooperate by cleaning, cooking and having sex with
the two, or be raped and shot immediately. "You'd better believe us, Brenda, or you'll be dead," Lake tells
her. "I believe you," she replies. Not surprisingly, she is one of Ng's twelve alleged victims.
Lake...his plans to build a cell for a sex slave... committed suicide in 1985 by taking cyanide while in police custody...
Though Ng, 37, is accused of killing seven men, three women and two babies in their remote cabin in the Sierra Nevada
foothills, police say as many as 25 people may have been sadistically killed by the lethal duo. Many victims
are still unidentified because the killers dismembered the bodies and scattered the bones.

(From the Internet Crime Archives)

If IIRC, Ng fled to Canada, who would not return him unless the death penalty was taken off the table. Hey, if it were
up to me, I would have let Canada's shrinking pool of taxpayers pick up the tab, them being so humane and all.

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