Prison and Prevention

A registered sex offender, Eric Eugene Hartwell, cuts off his GPS monitoring device and simply vanishes. An unregistered sex offender chooses not to even bother to register. How can you argue that prison may not be the best means of preventing further crimes?

Unregistered sex offender gets 6 months

PEABODY — A convicted pedophile with a history of failing to register as a sex offender was sentenced yesterday to six months in jail for not telling Peabody police he was living in the city.

But while Brian Sewall, 58, has already spent nearly six months in custody and will complete his sentence within a few days, he won’t be walking free anytime soon. Instead, he’ll be sent to New Hampshire to answer to a warrant for the same charge, lodged while he was living there.

Sewall was arrested in September after Peabody and Salem police learned that he was living at 111R Main St. in Peabody and frequenting the McDonald’s on Main Street, usually in the afternoon, after school let out. And police learned that he had been seen on a regular basis with a 15-year-old boy.

That was a concern to police because of the nature of Sewall’s convictions. In 1992, he was convicted of sexually assaulting two boys in their early teens.

Note: It isn’t the first time he has failed to register.

He’s been charged with the same crime at least four times in Massachusetts, starting about a year after he got out of jail in the indecent assault case, in 1997, and in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Sex offender sentenced to 25 years for gun collection

KNOXVILLE — A sex offender will spend 25 years in federal prison for his gun collection and could face more prison time if convicted in the killing of his ex-wife.

A federal jury found Douglas V. Whisnant, 61, of Oneida guilty in October of possession of guns by a felon and possession of an unregistered machine gun. U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan denied his requests for a reduced sentence today.

 

Anthony Kirkland is charged with killing 13-year-old Esme Kenney. If convicted, it wouldn’t be the first person he has murdered nor been charged with murdering. In 1987, he was convicted of choking and beating Leola Douglas, 28,to death serving 16 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.

Kirkland indicted in 3 slayings

Kirkland also is charged with killing two other women, and like he allegedly did with Esme, burning their bodies to cover up evidence.

Officials said Kirkland exhibited an animalistic anger when he so violently strangled the 5-foot, 4-inch, 100-pound girl that the capillaries in her cheeks and eyes burst.

While the charges involving Esme are the most recent and well-known, Kirkland also is charged with killing two other women, and like he allegedly did with Esme, burning their bodies to cover up evidence.

Those women are:

Casonya “Sharee” Crawford, 14, whose body was found May 11, 2006, in Avondale in a pile of burned tires. One tire was around her neck.

Mary Jo Newton, 45, a mother of two, whose body was found June 15, 2006. Newton’s body was so badly burned that dental records were required to identify her.

 

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Repeat offenders on the run

While States are debating how to fund the “Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Protection Act of 2006″, a couple of high profile fugitives remain on the run.

In Washington, U.S. Marshal’s are hunting for Eric Eugene Hartwell a convicted Level III sex offender. A repeat offender living in a halfway house, he cut off his GPS monitoring device, left and has not been seen since.

In Indiana in August of 2006, Joseph Mark McCormick, 44, who served three years in prison after pleading guilty in 2003 to molesting Peggy Sue Altes, failed a drug test as part of his probation and cannot be located. A warrant for his arrest was issued in March in Hancock County and he remains at large.

In Ohio, Esme Kenney was murdered allegedly by Anthony Kirkland, a previously convicted killer and sex offender. He was kicked out of his halfway house Could her death have been prevented?

Questions in Esme Kenney’s killing

Esme’s body was found in nearby woods the next day. Anthony Kirkland, a previously convicted killer and sex offender, has been charged in her death. Her family questioned why the police did not immediately issue an Amber Alert or send officers to search the area as soon as the parents called to report her missing. The police response does not seem unreasonable, given what they knew at the time. But officers should be flexible and not bound by rigid timelines when responding to such reports.

Of greater concern was the way police reacted a week earlier when they responded to the Volunteers of America halfway house in Over-the-Rhine where Kirkland was then living. Staff members had called police because they said Kirkland had hit another resident. When officers arrived, the other resident refused to press charges, but the Volunteers of America wanted to evict Kirkland. So the police escorted him from the building at 11:15 p.m., and turned him loose on the street.

The halfway house specializes in sex offenders, and Kirkland had been there since being released from prison a few months earlier after serving a year for importuning a 13-year-old. He was not on parole, but living in the halfway house was a condition of his post-release supervision. Also in Kirkland’s background was 16 years in prison for killing and burning another woman.

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