North Park resident Sam Warren will be released from San Diego County Jail on March 23, according to the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, after serving nine months of his one-year term for attempted kidnapping.

Warren is the author of Tales from the Tijuana Jails, a book about his three-and-a-half-year imprisonment in a Tijuana jail, after being convicted of corrupting a minor.

The San Diego case is related to events Warren describes in his book, published in 2004, which details his friendship with Daniel Wooley, 42, an inmate in the Tijuana jail while Warren was incarcerated. In his book, Warren credits Wooley with saving his life by helping him get food, medicine and protection from other inmates and guards.

Consequently, Warren says he complied when Wooley called him for a favor: Wooley, who several years later had returned to San Diego and was back in jail on elder abuse charges, asked him to kidnap his roommate, an undocumented alien, and take him back to Mexico.

According to Warren’s probation report, Warren purchased handcuffs, a security badge and a map to where Wooley’s roommate, Golden Hill resident Roberto Acosta, 29, lived. He also phoned Acosta to find out when he would be home, and, according to Warren’s conspiracy charge, he discussed the plan with a man named Aaron Stuart at the Alibi bar on June 6, 2006.

Stuart, 30, pled guilty to attempted kidnapping last December and was sentenced to one year in county jail on Jan. 8

The probation report says Warren wasn’t present for the actual kidnapping attempt, but that two other men arrived at Acosta’s home on July 28 and rang the doorbell. When Acosta let the two men inside, they asked him if he was Roberto Acosta. He said “Yes.”

Then one of them produced a badge and said, “You’re coming with us.” Acosta resisted. The furniture was knocked down, glass was broken and Acosta’s other roommate, the elder whom Wooley had abused, called 911.

The men fled, but not before accidentally dropping an e-mail from Wooley to Warren that described the plan and also Wooley’s motivation. According to court records, Wooley had written that he wanted his former roommate, Acosta, kidnapped because he was a witness to the elder abuse he was in jail for. Since Acosta would not be able to return to the U.S., Wooley thought the disappearance of the witness might cause his elder abuse case to go away too.

When San Diego police found the e-mail, they contacted Warren, who admitted his involvement. He claimed that he thought it was legal to take Acosta across the border because he was already here illegally.

Warren pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a crime and could have received a three-year term in prison. However, the judge instead, last Feb. 1, sentenced him to one year, plus three-years probation, and gave him credits for 222 days spent in jail, which includes time off for good behavior. He was fined $200, ordered to pay $1,127 in probation costs, $570 for costs toward his court-appointed attorney, and ordered not to have any contact with the would-have-been kidnap victim, Acosta.

Wooley pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping and to committing perjury in the elder abuse case. The judge sentenced Wooley to seven years and six months in prison.

A probation officer assigned to Warren’s case wrote that he was “a trusting and easily influenced gentleman” who was “unsophisticated.”

“If he remains under the influence of Wooley, he will likely find himself in further legal troubles,” the officer wrote.

Warren’s legal troubles in Mexico, as he chronicles in his book, began with his arrest on April 17, 2000, when Tijuana police officers raided his bed-and-breakfast inn. He and seven others were charged with rape, making child pornography and possession of illegal drugs. Warren claims the charges were false. He wrote that the 17-year-old boy involved did work at his business, but Warren thought he was older. He says the police tortured the teenager who then claimed he was exposed to gay men performing sex in the inn. He says Tijuana police sent a known drug addict and male prostitute to the inn to gather evidence, and that police took his money and all his electronic equipment including televisions and computers.

The Mexican court dropped Warren’s rape and child pornography charges, but convicted him with corruption of a minor. Warren notes that the justice system in Mexico is far different from that in the United States, as in Mexico there are no jury trials. Defendants are presumed guilty and must prove innocence before judges.

The arrests of Warren and eight others garnered much press and TV coverage in Mexico. Warren and his co-defendants were led to areas in the jail where they could be photographed and video taped by various media, which dubbed them the “Playas Eight.”

The San Diego case will not conclude with Warren’s release.

A judge suspended a six-year prison term for Stuart and allowed him to serve his jail term in a drug rehabilitation facility, said Deputy District Attorney Michael Groch. Stuart was placed on five years probation.

The other would-be kidnapper, James Douglas Condelles, 37, remains in jail on $25,000 bail and is awaiting trial on April 4. Condelles has pleaded not guilty and wrote a letter to the prosecutor proclaiming his innocence, records show. “As God is my witness,” wrote Condelles, “I had no prior knowledge as to any plans for a kidnap or previous knowledge as to the goings on in their twisted little Peyton Place.”