E-MAILS WARNING OF RAPIST ARE FALSE SHERIFF'S STATION CALMS PUBLIC FEARS.

Byline: PATRICIA FARRELL AIDEM

Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA -- A flurry of e-mails hit Santa Clarita on Thursday and Friday, warning of a rapist on the loose in Saugus and an intruder hitting homes in Valencia.

Scores of soccer moms and working women were warned to lock their doors and windows and to be on guard outdoors at night.

The Santa Clarita sheriff's station fielded dozens of calls from what one official called an "e-mail frenzy." So what's going on in Santa Clarita, among the safest cities in the nation?

"It's not true," Lt. Brenda Cambra said. "There's one e-mail that says her brother's a deputy, but none of these things in the e-mail are true."

A woman did report March 11 she was raped at her home near Copper Hill and Seco Canyon roads, but she has since recanted, saying she made the claim to get attention from her boyfriend, Sgt. Darren Harris said.

Rumors about crime in Santa Clarita have been around as long as deputies can remember. But e-mail has helped spread them like wildfire.

"It's amazing what it can do," Cambra said. "The ones we have seen were addressed to 40 to 50 people." And with a mouse click on the "forward" button, the town was abuzz.

E-mail went to a Santa Clarita City Hall employee, a Hart Union High School District staffer and a woman at Princess Cruises, among the city's largest employers. Helping feed the panic was the escape earlier in the week of an inmate from the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic -- the e-mailed warnings didn't mention he was in for drug charges, not rape.

Harris said that if a predator were on the loose, the public would be notified.

"The Santa Clarita Valley sheriff's station is encouraging the public to rest assured that had any attack of the magnitude being expressed in these e-mails actually occurred, a widespread public announcement would have been made with complete, accurate, timely and detailed information," Harris wrote in a press release.

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