A Sierra Vista man arrested in January for allegedly assaulting several relatives has now been charged in another case with sexual misconduct felonies after the named victim became comfortable reporting to police once the man was in jail.
William John Fink has remained in the Cochise County jail awaiting trial since his Jan. 14 arrest on felony aggravated assault charges. He was then indicted by a county grand jury in July on more than one dozen felonies related to sexual assaults Fink allegedly committed in 2022.
Fink, 50, will be back in court for pretrial conferences in both cases on Sept. 18. He faces decades in prison if convicted at trial of all charges in the cases.
Public records show several Sierra Vista police officers responded around noon Jan. 14 to a 911 call about a minor being beaten “in the head, back, and chest” inside Fink’s home.
Upon arrival, the officers learned Fink suffered a traumatic brain injury during his military service and had been experiencing bouts of increasingly abusive anger and rage in recent weeks.
Fink was not on scene when officers responded but was found to have walked to a relative’s home an hour away. He later admitted repeatedly striking the minor, according to the probable cause statement written by SVPD Ofc. Samuel Brady in support of Fink’s arrest.
Brady would eventually seize two tomahawks and a large machete from Fink’s house. The officer noted a large gash in the wall near the front door and what appeared to be drywall residue on the blade of the machete.
The cut was made by Fink earlier in the week, according to a witness.
The same witness told Brady that Fink had also recently grabbed a tomahawk while angry and asked, “do you want me to use this?” the officer wrote. When Brady asked the witness if it appeared Fink was serious or simply being dramatic, the witness responded, “he might be serious.”
As a result, the police were not called by any of Fink’s relatives in an effort to not further provoke him, the report notes.
But the beating of a child on Jan. 14 was concerning enough that an adult who was aware of the ongoing abuse called 911 after Fink left the residence.
Brady asked one of the relatives why the family endured the violence for so long.
“She stated that he threatened to kill her. She said that he told her that it takes ten minutes for the police to arrive and that during that time he would ‘f*** her up beyond repair,’” Brady wrote in the probable cause statement.
In June, one of the relatives came forward to allege Fink had committed several acts of sexual assault last year at locations in Cochise County. A SVPD detective investigated the allegations, leading to a 14-count felony indictment which was served on Fink on July 12 in the county jail.
Court records show all the named victims in both cases reside out of state.