Manhunt flooded with tips

Authorities have received hundreds of tips from across the country on the whereabouts of Chester "Chet" Arthur Stiles, but the former Siegfried & Roy animal trainer managed to evade capture for another day Monday.

But a portrait of the man who police allege videotaped himself raping a 3-year-old Las Vegas girl continues to evolve.

A Las Vegas woman who said she is Stiles' former girlfriend told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday that he is a master of deception who fooled her for at least a decade.

"He presented himself wholly as the family guy, the kind of guy a single mom was looking for to help raise her own children," Tina Allen said on the national broadcast.

Allen said she trusted Stiles, 37, around her own children and her young grandson. She said he would play with the children "on the floor like the rest of us" and dated women who were older than he was.

"He put on such a good show. I would congratulate him and tell him he deserves an Emmy," she told "Good Morning America."

But at her Las Vegas home, Allen's mother, 65-year-old Nola Krause, said Monday she always had a bad feeling about Stiles. Krause said she made it clear to Stiles that she was not, going to be civil toward him, so Stiles stayed away from the family's house when she was there.

"I did not like him. He was not a person I cared to have around," she said from her Las Vegas home.

Siegfried & Roy decided not to have him around either. Stiles trained animals for the illusionists from March 2002 to July 2002 but was "let go" when he did not show up for work one day, said David Kirvin, spokesman for the longtime Strip headliners.

Allen told CNN's Larry King live on Monday night that she was worried Stiles might emerge from hiding to harm her and said she would seek the protection of Las Vegas police today.

"I know him to be very violent, and he's not going down without a fight," Allen said on "Good Morning America."

Nye County District Attorney Bob Beckett said, "He's a survivalist type who isn't bothered by living without electricity or water, and always carries a fighting-type knife."

"We do consider him to be a very dangerous individual," Las Vegas police Capt. Vincent Cannito said Monday.

Cannito also said Stiles could be armed and "has a history of narcotics usage."

Las Vegas police arrested Stiles about a half-dozen times from 1999 through 2003 but not on drug charges. The arrests were on charges ranging from battery and domestic violence to auto theft and assault with a deadly weapon.

He was convicted in 1999 in Las Vegas of carrying a concealed weapon and in 2001 of conspiracy to commit grand larceny, according to court records.

Stiles pleaded no contest in Houston in 1993 to unlawful carrying of a weapon.

Authorities obtained a warrant for Stiles' arrest in 2004 after he was accused of molesting a then-6-year-old girl in Las Vegas.

Stiles became the target of a nationwide manhunt this weekend after authorities identified him as the man seen in a videotaped sexual assault of the 3-year-old.

Allen told "Good Morning America" that she is a friend of the child's family and that the girl, now 7, does not remember the abuse.

Police found the girl safe with her mother on Friday at their Las Vegas home. Police said they determined that the video was filmed in Las Vegas.

Darrin Tuck, a 26-year-old Pahrump resident, turned the tape over to Nye County sheriff's deputies on Sept. 8 and said he found it in the desert. Police said Tuck had the tape for several months and showed it to others before turning it in.

Nye County sheriff's deputies obtained a warrant to arrest Tuck for violating his probation, and he turned himself into the Nye County jail on Sunday.

As of late Monday afternoon, child pornography charges had not been filed against Tuck, authorities said.

Cannito said that after viewing the videotape and "very clearly" seeing the sexual assault and the assailant, Las Vegas police expect Stiles to face several charges including lewdness with a minor and sexual assault of a child.

This case shot to national attention because of the unusual release of the photos of the child and her attacker during the time week when authorities were trying to identify and find her. But sexual abuse of children is unfortunately something that Las Vegas police deal with on a daily basis, Cannito said. Las Vegas police investigate about 2,000 cases of children being abused sexually in Southern Nevada each year, he said.