NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- 'Son of Sam' prosecutor Eugene Gold has admitted he sexually molested the 10-year-old daughter of an Alabama district attorney and agreed to undergo psychiatric treatment to avoid prosecution, the state district attorney general says.
In exchange for the confession, District Attorney General Thomas Shriver placed an aggravated rape charge against the former Brooklyn district attorney on hold for a two-year probationary period. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
'I acknowledge my sole responsibility for the acts which have occurred between the 10-year-old female child involved and myself,' said a two-page admission of guilt signed by Gold.
'... I am making this admission of guilt because I am guilty of the crime which I have admitted herein.'
The two-page statement wasapproved by the Alabama district attorney whose daughter was molested by Gold. Both Gold and the girl's father were attending a conference for district attorneys at NasOville when the assault occurred Aug. 17. Gold delivered a speech at the conference.
'I would not have done my duty if I had not gotten that (admission),' the prosecutor said in a telephone interview from Alabama. 'We had to put others on notice. Now there's no question in anybody's mind that he did it.'
But the Alabama prosecutor said he wanted to spare his child the 'additional trauma' of a trial.
Gold admitted he 'engaged in unlawful sexual conduct' with the girl when he first met her on a bus tour to the Jack Daniel's Distillery in Lynchburg, Tenn., and again 'engaged in unlawful sexual fondling' of the child in her room at Opryland Hotel.
'I am very very relieved to have this behind me,' Gold said as he and his wife Ronnie left the Metro Courthouse hand-in-hand. 'I've had a very very bright and wonderful past. I am looking forward to having the same kind of future.'
Gold, 59, a Brooklyn distict attorney from 1968 to 1981, helped prosecute New York's famous 'Son of Sam' murder case, resulting in the conviction of David Berkowitz, then 27, for the 1976-77 murders of six people and wounding of seven others in New York. He is serving a 325-year sentence in Attica.
