Alleged child rapist didn't hide his identity in China

SUZHOU, China — A fugitive from Washington state accused of raping his daughter and posting videos of the abuse on the Internet lived openly in China, even enjoying visits from his new wife and registering at a local fitness club under his own name.

Kenneth John Freeman had been living in Seattle when he fled the United States last year, months after his 17-year-old daughter told her mother he had assaulted her four years earlier. Video of the abuse is among the most widely downloaded child-pornography videos in recent years.

Freeman, one of America's 15 most-wanted men, was captured Tuesday after more than a year on the run while trying to enter Hong Kong from China using his own passport.

He has been charged in Washington state with three counts of rape of a child and jumping bail. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. He also faces federal charges of producing and distributing child pornography.

U.S. court documents show that Freeman's wife, Maleka May, visited him in China more than once during his time as a fugitive. May, who reportedly married him nine months before he was charged and is believed to have posted the bail that allowed him to flee, was detained in San Francisco on Thursday as she got off a plane from China.

Information provided Saturday by the Powerhouse Gym also provided some clues about the months Freeman lived in the eastern city of Suzhou.

Gym staff recognized Freeman immediately from his photo posted on the Department of Justice Web site; computer records showed he registered under the name John Freeman and listed a Suzhou cellphone number as a contact. Patrons said Freeman worked out almost every day and seemed friendly. One man said the fugitive had something of the air of a celebrity about him.

"He was the biggest guy in there. We figured he was some famous bodybuilder who had come to China to work," said Tom Stern of Berkeley, Calif., a gym regular in the city to study Chinese.

Police in Hong Kong said Freeman, 44, worked as a computer specialist at an American-based company in Suzhou, a high-tech manufacturing hub about a two-hour drive from Shanghai.

Stern and other gym members said Freeman often partnered at the gym with another American man whose identity wasn't immediately known.

A restaurant hostess who worked in the same building as the gym said she saw Freeman arrive virtually every evening, usually at about 5:30 p.m. and that he was sometimes accompanied by up to three other men.

May, 37, was arrested Thursday for making false statements to federal agents, the Department of Justice's northern California office said.