Suspect wanted on child sex crimes
Kuklo on the run after being tipped off about arrest warrant
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A city man facing 121 charges in relation to sexual abuse of children is on the run from police after being tipped off about a warrant service attempt.
Altoona police currently hold an active arrest warrant for 37-year-old Albert "AJ" Otto Kuklo III. According to a post on the department's Facebook page, Kuklo may be trying to flee to the southern portion of the United States, but he may still be in this area.
Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to contact the department by private message through the Facebook page or by calling 814-949-2490.
According to court documents, Kuklo faces 20 felony charges of rape of a child; 19 felony charges of statutory sexual assault – accused 11 years older; 19 felony charges of sexual assault; 14 felony charges of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child; three felony charges of witness intimidation; two felony charges of corruption of minors – defendant age 18 or above; two felony charges of sexual abuse of minor – complainant under 13 years; and single felony counts of rape threat of forcible compulsion and intimidation; 19 misdemeanor charges each of indecent assault person less than 13 years of age and indecent assault person less than 16 years of age; and one misdemeanor charge each of corruption of minors and furnishing liquor to minors.
The affidavit of probable cause lays out the yearlong investigation into a report made on Sept. 26, 2022. On that day, police responded to a home on the 100 block of 16th Street after a caller said a 12-year-old girl related that Kuklo had sexually assaulted her.
The caller said another woman had asked the victim if Kuklo ever sexually assaulted her. That woman told police she asked the girl because Kuklo had confessed to her on Sept. 24, 2022, that he had sexual intercourse with multiple underage girls with whom he is related.
Kuklo told the woman he didn't consider it rape because the girls were willing and it helped to lower his blood pressure, court documents state.
According to the affidavit, Kuklo was confiding in the woman because he asked her to participate in a threesome with him and the victim, telling her that he and his ex-girlfriend had sex together with the girl in the past.
The woman told the girl's guardian, asked the victim about the assaults and the guardian called police, according to the report.
Also on Sept. 26, 2022, the victim's guardian applied for an emergency protection-from-abuse order against Kuklo, which was verbally served over the phone as Kuklo refused to tell police his location, the affidavit states.
The next day, the victim received a Facebook message urging her to tell police she lied about the assaults, that Kuklo was a "good man" and "a great person" and that he would spend the rest of his life in prison and get killed in there, among other entreaties to get the girl to take back what she said.
The victim took a screenshot of the message and blocked the account, police reported.
That day, the victim was also interviewed at the Children's Advocacy Center, where she said Kuklo sexually assaulted her from the time she was 5 years old, which was when he was released from prison. The first assaults were when the child lived in Schellsburg, Bedford County, the report states.
In later interviews, she stated that he assaulted her again when she was 8 or 9 years old and additional assaults began after she turned 11 years old, when the family moved to Blair County, she told investigators.
She said he would only assault her if no one else was around. During the interview with the Children's Advocacy Center, she said the most recent assaults occurred at the 16th Street home in Altoona in the early morning, about 4 a.m., before he left for work and while the rest of the people in the house were asleep. She said Kuklo told her she had to have sex with him to help lower his blood pressure, the report states.
She also said Kuklo told her not to tell anyone because he would go away for life. He also threatened to ground her if she didn't have sex with him. As a reward, he didn't make her do chores, she said.
He also showed her porn videos, she said.
It was during the interview with the Children's Advocacy Center that police learned of a second victim, an 11-year-old, when the family lived on the 100 block of Coin Drive in Claysburg in February 2022. The first victim told investigators that she witnessed Kuklo raping the other victim when she got home from school.
The 12-year-old victim reported Kuklo bought her and the other victim sex toys and described the items to police. She also described encounters with Kuklo and his former girlfriend.
The affidavit states the victim's statements were consistent with what the witness told police Kuklo confessed.
On Nov. 23, 2022, a Children's Advocacy Center interview was conducted with the second victim, who said she was raped on numerous occassions by Kuklo when she briefly lived at the Coin Drive, Claysburg, residence. She said that if she and the other victim didn't have sex with Kuklo, he took everything from them and only allowed them to go outside to go on the bus to school.
She said Kuklo acted like he had a sickness and that she needed to have sex with him as it helped his blood sugar.
She, too, described the sex toys Kuklo used, said he tried to get them drunk and physically abused her as a way of control. He also burned her favorite stuffed animal as a way to control her, she said during the interview.
The second victim said he told her if she ever told anyone about the assaults, she would not see the other girl again. He also told her he always gets away with it, the report states.
This victim said the assaults occurred almost every single night, mostly at the Coin Drive location but at least once at the 16th Street, Altoona, home.
During the investigation, the family tried to find the sex toys the girls described, but could not find the items, the report states.
Then, on Oct. 1, 2022, while Kuklo's remaining belongings were being moved from the attic to the basement, an assortment of sex toys and a suitcase of pink, white and blue childrens' panties were found. When the family asked the older victim about the items, she stated "those are the bad toys," the report states.
Many of the items matched what the victims described, police reported.
In April, while moving from the Altoona home, the older victim and her guardian found and brought to Altoona police another sex toy in a backpack.
It was logged into evidence and sent to the state police crime lab, as were the previous items found last year, the report states.
On April 20, police interviewed Kuklo, who provided DNA samples and denied all allegations, though he admitted to living in Claysburg and confirmed the sex toys were his. He ended the interview after telling police to look into statistics about girls making false reports, police reported.
Police continued to interview various people related to Kuklo in an effort to build a timeline, according to information in the affidavit.
In May, police received a search warrant for the Facebook account that messaged the first victim, finding it was a fake and created on the day after police started their investigation last year. The account was eventually traced back to Kuklo, police reported.
On Nov. 9, police received the DNA results for the underwear and sex toys, all of which linked Kuklo to the devices as well as the victims.
Police on Nov. 16 conducted a followup interview with the older victim to determine charging counts, the affidavit states. At that time, the victim said she was assaulted five or six times at the Claysburg residence and countless times at the Altoona home. The last assault occurred about a week before police were notified in September 2022, the victim said.