Water office chief faces rape charge

LeDoux: Shawnee County district attorney says alleged attack occurred in May; bond set at $500,000

By Steve Swartz and Erin Adamson

The Capital-Journal

The director of the Kansas Water Office was being held in lieu of $500,000 bond late Tuesday on charges of rape and kidnapping.

Rural Holton resident Alan L. LeDoux, 55, a former aide to Govs. Bill Graves and Mike Hayden, was arrested late in the day Tuesday and charged with aggravated kidnapping, rape by fear of force, aggravated criminal sodomy and aggravated burglary, according to a news release from Shawnee County District Attorney Robert Hecht.

LeDoux is accused of entering an undisclosed residence between 1 and 3 a.m. on May 23 while the victim was asleep.

"The assailant," Hecht's release states, "was wearing a ski mask and assaulted the victim, bound her arms together with tape, blindfolded her, forcibly moved from the bedroom into the bathroom, cut her night shirt off and committed the offenses charged."

LeDoux, a Shawnee County native, was appointed director of the Kansas Water Office in 1995 by Graves. Before his water office appointment, he was Graves' chief legislative liaison, a job he also held in the Hayden administration.

LeDoux has long been prominent in northeast Kansas politics, serving as a member of the Republican State Committee in the early 1990s, chairman of the Jackson County Republican Central Committee and later as the vice chairman of the Jackson County Republican Party.

He also has been a civic and church leader in Holton and Jackson County.

"It's bizarre. When I heard it this afternoon, I said it had to be a mistake," said Micheal Ireland, a lawyer in Jackson County who has known LeDoux for about 20 years.

Ireland said he has been in the local Optimist club with LeDoux, has sold Christmas trees with him and together they helped with the Optimists' youth basketball league.

Topeka City Councilman Clark Duffy, who is assistant director of the Kansas Water Office, said after a council meeting Tuesday night he was shocked by the allegations.

"I don't know what this is about," Duffy said.

The pastor of Holton's Evangelical United Methodist Church said he hadn't been aware of the charges until notified by the media late Tuesday.

Kelvin Heitman, primary pastor of the Evangelical Methodist Church in Holton, said LeDoux was a Sunday school teacher at the church.

"He's been a a full member of this church for a long time," Heitman said. "He's an upstanding member of the church."

Capital-Journal staff writers Mike Hall and Jim McLean contributed to this report.

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