Nearly a year after disappearing before his scheduled sentencing and prompting a nationwide manhunt, convicted child molester Carl W. Cacconie was sentenced Monday in El Dorado County Superior Court to 18 years in state prison.
Cacconie, 51, was convicted by a jury in July 2025 of six felony counts of committing lewd acts on a child under the age of 14. He failed to appear for his sentencing hearing in August 2025 after removing his GPS ankle monitor and disappearing, launching a nearly 10-month search by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.
Authorities arrested Cacconie earlier this month in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he had been living under an assumed identity after allegedly staging his own disappearance by leaving behind a suicide note. He was taken into custody by the FBI Phoenix Desert Hawk Fugitive Task Force and extradited back to El Dorado County to face sentencing.
On Monday, an El Dorado County judge sentenced Cacconie to the maximum term of 18 years in state prison for the child sex abuse convictions, bringing an end to a case that drew statewide attention after he vanished while free on $1 million bail awaiting sentencing.
The case sparked criticism after prosecutors unsuccessfully requested that Cacconie be remanded into custody immediately following his guilty verdicts. Instead, he remained free pending sentencing while wearing a court-ordered GPS monitor. The device stopped transmitting days before his scheduled sentencing hearing, and Cacconie never appeared in court.
Following his capture, El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson credited the coordinated efforts of the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office, the FBI and numerous law enforcement partners for ensuring Cacconie was ultimately located and returned to California to face justice.
Federal investigators said Cacconie’s arrest came after months of tracking leads across multiple states before locating him in Arizona. He was taken into custody without incident.
The sentencing concludes one of El Dorado County’s highest-profile criminal cases in recent years and ends a months-long search that began after Cacconie disappeared rather than reporting to court to begin serving his prison sentence.
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