Tainted-Food Witness Questioned

A drifter wanted for questioning in connection with the tampering of three baby food jars bought at an Orange County supermarket showed up at the Irvine police station Thursday accompanied by his lawyer and left an hour later.

Irvine Police Lt. Jeff Love said Charles Dewey Cage, 47, was a witness in the case in which a mashed castor bean containing tiny amounts of the deadly poison ricin were found in Gerber’s Banana Yogurt Dessert on two occasions.

“We’re asking for his assistance, and that’s why he’s here,” Love said.

Mark Williams, Cage’s attorney, said his client was “absolutely innocent of these crimes. He didn’t know anything, and he couldn’t help the police.”

Williams said that the Orange County district attorney’s investigators and Irvine detectives who questioned his client did not request photos or fingerprints and made no requests to see him again.

“I don’t know why they pinpointed him,” Williams said. “Police often jump to conclusions.”

At a news conference Wednesday, Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas said Cage was in the Ralphs on Alton Parkway in Irvine “at a relevant time.” Authorities have not said how Cage might be connected to the case.

In addition to Cage’s appearance Thursday, questions have arisen about the time delay before Irvine police sent the food jars to labs to be analyzed. The jars were not sent to the Orange County Sheriff Department’s crime lab until the day after the second incident, 17 days after the first one was discovered.

Love declined to comment on the delay.

The first tampering was discovered May 31. An Irvine couple were feeding their 9-month-old daughter and found a note wrapped in cellophane inside the jar. The note said that the food was contaminated and that the person eating it would die. It also named an Irvine police officer who it implied had placed the notes in the jars, Irvine Police Chief David Maggard said.

The second note was discovered June 16 after an Irvine man had finished feeding his 11-month-old son. Police found a third note in an unopened baby food jar in the pantry.

The Orange County sheriff’s crime lab did not receive the jars from Irvine police until June 17, sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said. After DNA and fingerprint tests were performed, the jars were returned to Irvine police July 2, Amormino said.

The federal Food and Drug Administration lab, which checks for food tampering, did not receive the jars until four weeks after the May incident, said Dan Hansen, the agency’s assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office.

Neither of the two babies who ate the food became ill. If the children had eaten an entire jarful, they probably would have suffered intestinal problems, such as diarrhea, an FDA physician said. He said it was unlikely that either child would have died.

Cage has a history of violent crimes that date back to 1991.

He was charged in September 1991 with three counts of assault with a deadly weapon in San Diego County. He pleaded guilty to two counts and was sentenced to 270 days in county jail and three years’ probation. The third count was dismissed.

In 1996, he was again convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in Orange County and sentenced to three years in prison. He was released in November 1998.

But six months later, he returned to prison with a six-year sentence for assault with force causing great bodily injury.

Cage was paroled in December 2003 and worked at another Ralphs supermarket, on Culver Drive, during the grocery store strike, which ended in February. He completed parole May 10, three weeks before the affected jars of baby food were discovered.

Cage’s cousin William Molson said Cage worked at the supermarket as a stocker until after the first tampering incident.

Molson said an Irvine police officer stopped his cousin one night as he was walking home from work, angering Cage.

Williams said Cage did not know the officer who was named in the tampering notes.