FREMONT — The investigation started when a 16-year-old girl limped into the Whole Foods on Mowry Avenue, bruised, bloody, and nude, having just escaped from a third story apartment window after two days of captivity, authorities said.
Police were able to identify a suspect quickly, but tracking him down was another matter. It took nearly two years from the August 2022 initial report before 30-year-old Jeremy Wilhite — a man who’d been reported missing by his own mother and who police once believed was deceased — was arrested on charges of kidnapping, sexual assault, and possessing or distributing child pornography, court records show.
Now Wilhite is at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, being held in lieu of $300,000 bail, with his next court appearance set for November.
Prosecutors allege that Wilhite came into contact with the 16-year-old victim in Sunnyvale, where she was attempting to get to a family member’s home. Wilhite and a 17-year-old boy he was with allegedly offered the girl a ride, but instead took her to their apartment in Fremont, right next to the Whole Foods.
Once there, the girl said Wilhite told her to get naked and put on high heels, and then blocked her escape when she refused. What followed, according to police, was a beating, and a two-day ordeal that ended when she got up the courage to jump from the window and seek help. The girl told police she was sexually assaulted, and later forced to wear high heels and look in the area for “customers” — a clear reference to sexual servitude.
When the girl arrived at the Whole Foods, employees there covered her with aprons and called police. She quickly led officers back to the apartment and identified the unit. Police detained the 17-year-old boy there, who quickly became uncooperative, but there was no sign of Wilhite, authorities said.
Investigators did locate Wilhite’s iPad, which had a video of an adult woman performing a sex act on the teen boy as Wilhite recorded, according to police. That’s what led to the child pornography charge, court records show.
With an arrest warrant for Wilhite on kidnapping and forcible oral copulation charges, police now just needed to locate him. But just six weeks after the incident with the girl, Wilhite’s mother reported him as a missing person, claiming to have not seen her son since about two weeks before the alleged kidnapping and sexual assault, according to court records.
Police searched areas Wilhite was known to frequent, attempted to trace his cellphone, talked to others who knew him, including relatives and an attorney, and came up empty. In 2023, they brought their case to the Alameda County District Attorney’s office, which filed three felonies against Wilhite. But he was still nowhere to be found.
Investigators began to believe that Wilhite might have died, but continued to search for him nonetheless. He was eventually arrested last May 14, in San Francisco, and brought to Alameda County to face charges, records show.
Police say that six months before the alleged kidnapping, Wilhite was investigated — but never charged — in a near-identical incident. This time, it was a woman who said that she met Wilhite while scavenging for cigarettes in the Fremont area, and that he offered to take her back to his home and give her some.
Once there, the woman told police that Wilhite forced her to stay, raped and sexually assaulted her multiple times, occasionally forcing her to wear wigs and specific garments in the process. When she was able to escape after two days, she left her bicycle and other property and walked to the encampment where she lived, authorities said.
The woman may not have reported the incident to police, except that shortly after her escape, Wilhite allegedly found her. She told investigators he grabbed her while she was sleeping, and dragged her 50 feet while she screamed. When she yelled “rape,” a witness responded that he was going to call 911, and Wilhite fled, according to police.
