NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent
Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., Feb. 2, 2016
Did accused abuser, ‘Mr. Wonder,’ have links to Zuni?
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com
GALLUP — When U. S. Marshals arrested Frank Selas, aka Frank Szeles, last week in California, law enforcement officials in Louisiana were a step closer to finally resolving a decades-old child sex abuse case.
With Selas’ arrest, however, several new mysteries surfaced. Was Selas, 76, really the fugitive law enforcement officials had been hunting for 37 years? Had Selas left a trail of sex abuse victims around the world? And had Selas once worked as a school principal at the Diocese of Gallup’s St. Anthony Mission School on the Pueblo of Zuni in 1974?
‘Mr. Wonder’
On Jan. 26, Sheriff William Earl Hilton, of Louisiana’s Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office, called a news conference about Selas’ arrest the previous day.
“As I have stated many times before, there are cases you never forget, some that always are in the back of your mind that you hope one day to solve,” Hilton stated in a news release. “And today, this person has been brought to justice.”
According to Hilton, back in 1979, Selas was a children’s television personality in Monroe, Louisiana, known as “Mr. Wonder” on KNOE-TV. In addition to hosting his kiddie TV show, Selas invited children between the ages of 5 and 11 to enjoy free camping weekends with “Mr. Wonder.”
In June 1979, Hilton said, he was a detective when several parents accused Selas of sexually abusing their sons on a camping trip. An investigation was launched and an arrest warrant was issued, but Selas skipped town before he could be arrested. His car was found a day later in the Dallas area, and he remained a fugitive for the next 37 years.
“The primary reason for this press conference is detectives believe there are more victims out there, possibly over several jurisdictions on (sic) Louisiana, nationally and even internationally as Selas travelled to several countries including Japan and Central and South America,” the news release stated.
Hilton encouraged anyone with knowledge about Selas to contact Detective Stephen Phillips at the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office at 318-473-6727 or 318-473-6700.
Classified ad clues
After Selas’ disappearance in 1979, sheriff’s officials began learning more about his past. They learned Selas had bragged that he had worked in 31 different countries, and they verified his teaching position at St. Mary’s International School in Tokyo, a Catholic school that has been impacted by the clergy sex abuse scandal. While at St. Mary’s, Selas led adventure trips for adolescent boys that he called the “Junior Peace Corps.” To date, however, there are no known allegations against Selas during his time at St. Mary’s.
But prior to working in Louisiana, did Selas also work briefly at St. Anthony Mission in Zuni?
Ken Booth, a retired journalist, has been attempting to track Selas for more than three decades. Booth’s online research led him to the discovery of classified ads in the Gallup Independent from 1974. Three ads, placed in August and September of that year, directed job seekers to contact the principal of St. Anthony School, listed as “Frank Seles” or “Frank Selas.”
“We have no records of the man at all,” the Rev. Patrick McGuire, St. Anthony’s current pastor, said in a phone interview Monday.
McGuire said he was contacted by a detective from Louisiana last week inquiring about Selas. McGuire said he has looked through the school’s old personnel records, covered with “50 years of dust,” and found no reference to Selas. The detective, McGuire said, told him Selas reportedly worked at several other schools that also have not been able to locate Selas’ old personnel records.
McGuire, who said he would continue to search mission files, said four employees at St. Anthony have had a relationship with the school dating back to the 1960s and none remember Selas’ name or recognize his face from law enforcement photos.
“They have no recollections of him,” McGuire said.
Jeanette Suter, superintendent for Catholic schools in the Diocese of Gallup, was reached at her chancery office Monday. Suter said she had been out of town and was unaware of the Selas inquiry but she would look through chancery’s archives.
Franciscan records
The Rev. Thomas Maikowski, who resigned as director of education for the Gallup Diocese in 2005, was also contacted Monday. He suggested the Franciscan sisters in Colorado might have information about Selas’ possible employment in Zuni. Maikowski said he did not take over the diocesan education department until the late 1970s, so any principal in 1974 would have pre-dated him. The Franciscan sisters, however, were in charge of the Zuni mission school then, he said.
Questions to the Sisters of St. Francis of the Perpetual Adoration, based in Colorado Springs, were directed to Gail Hickert, the CEO of Mount St. Francis. In addition to once running St. Anthony School in Zuni, sisters from the religious order founded Gallup’s now defunct St. Mary’s Hospital.
Hickert said she had no idea where the religious order’s old personnel records from Zuni might be kept and said elderly sisters who once worked in the Gallup Diocese now have dementia.
Marquette University in Milwaukee does have Catholic archives from Native American communities in the western U.S., including the Pueblo of Zuni. According to an online Marquette resource, the university has some archived Zuni Mission records from the Sisters of St. Francis between the years 1935 and 1991, but none is specifically listed as dated from 1974.
Disputed identity
Selas was booked into jail in San Diego, where he is being held without bail. At his arraignment Wednesday, Selas pleaded not guilty to a fugitive charge, and he and his attorney are disputing that he is the person named in the criminal complaint.
Law enforcement authorities believe Selas fled to South America in 1979, returned to the U.S. in the 1980s, and then lived in numerous locations across the country, including Connecticut, Vermont, Illinois, Massachusetts and finally Southern California. They said Selas changed his surname to Szeles in 1992 in San Diego County.
After Selas’ arrest, spokesmen from both the Boy Scouts of America and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued statements that the California resident known as “Frank Szeles” had failed to comply with their youth protection policies in the past and had been barred from contact with children. Those violations, however, never resulted in any criminal charges.
Since Selas is arguing that he is not the man wanted by Louisiana authorities, San Diego Superior Court Judge David Szumowski has scheduled an identity hearing Feb. 11.
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