Apr
24
Sex offender next door changes neighborhood keeping track of those convicted
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By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Judi Villwock greeted her new next-door neighbor with a gift of chocolate chip cookies.
The man building his house in her Hobe Sound neighborhood seemed delightful, with his new wife and 11-year-old daughter.
But soon after, Villwock said, she got a phone call telling her to check the state’s registry of known sex offenders.
Her neighbor’s picture was on the list. Lewd and lascivious assault, the police report said, on a 7-year-old girl. Now, Villwock holds her grandchildren’s hands just to walk them across the yard, she said.
In Hobe Hills development and other neighborhoods around the state, fears of child molesters have been amplified by the slayings of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford and 13-year-old Sarah Lunde, allegedly by registered sex offenders. Villwock and others are begging the state to keep more offenders in prison and to be more vigilant once they are released.
State legislators quickly responded to the murders with proposals for better monitoring, tougher sentences and satellite tracking of offenders who repeatedly fail to report their addresses.
It isn’t enough to require offenders to report their addresses to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s registry, said state Sen. Nancy Argenziano, R-Crystal River, who sponsored many of the changes unanimously approved by the legislature.
Her plan requires them to appear in person at a county jail to verify their address and allows people who harbor missing sex offenders to be charged with a felony. Offenders convicted of a lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under 12 will face a minimum mandatory sentence of 25 years in prison and satellite monitoring for life.
“Sometimes we tend to believe that just because we put a registry in place that is going to stop sick people,” she said, “and it’s not going to.”
Gov. Jeb Bush is expected to sign the bill into law. The changes would take effect Sept. 1.
Florida Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, who lives 8 miles from the Lunsford family, has filed a similar but less restrictive bill that would expand some of Florida’s reforms nationwide.
“Certainly, I think Jessica’s murder really touched the country and brought to light some loopholes in the law,” Brown-Waite said.
Jessica’s murder in February was horrifying, legislators said, in part because so much could have been done to prevent it. The little girl was kidnapped from her bedroom, held hostage, wrapped in two trash bags and buried alive.
John Couey, the sex offender who investigators say admitted kidnapping and killing the girl, was on probation for a recent misdemeanor. But probation officers at a private contractor didn’t know his more violent previous crimes and didn’t notify law enforcement when he left his registered address.
Jessica’s family had no way of knowing that Couey lived on and off with his relatives near their home. And when deputies came looking for Couey after Jessica’s disappearance, his relatives covered for him and said he didn’t live there.
Authorities now believe Jessica may have been alive inside the home even as the relatives lied to deputies at the front door.
Argenziano said she can’t stop thinking about Jessica’s small fingers poking holes in the trash bags as dirt was piled on top of her, how terrified she must have been.
Though her first response was emotional, Argenziano said, she knows better tracking of offenders will require a bigger budget. Her proposal includes $11 million for satellite tracking of offenders.
But Gov. Bush has pointed out that the legislature has denied his past budget requests for more electronic monitoring of violent criminals. The tough laws won’t work without the money to pay for them, he has said.
Stuart police spokesman Sgt. Marty Jacobson agreed that the technology is useless if the state doesn’t hire enough workers to alert local law enforcement if a sex offender goes missing.
“Who will be monitoring the monitors?” Jacobson said.
Argenziano said she hopes legislators will keep their commitment to the monitoring program after Jessica’s face fades from the news.
“Will it be tougher next year?” she said. “It probably will. Money is a tough thing to talk about in Tallahassee.”
MANDATORY TIME TRUMPETED
Argenziano also knows many child molesters won’t get the maximum sentence. Many are released on plea deals.
Tougher laws with mandatory penalties will help prosecutors put away the most violent pedophiles and repeat offenders, said Mike Edmondson, spokesman for the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office.
But the trouble is that few sex offenders stalk their victims or grab schoolchildren from the bus stop. Most offenders molest their own relatives or children they know, Edmondson said.
Those crimes, committed in secret with little physical evidence, are among the hardest to prosecute. Cases often hang on the word of the young victim, and family members are reluctant to force the victims to testify in a trial. Busy courts don’t have the resources to try every case. Investigators know that some people will fling false accusations to get revenge or the upper hand in a custody battle.
The result is that most offenders are out of prison in a few years.
Once released, the offenders become the responsibility of law enforcement officers like Palm Beach County sheriff’s detective Larry Wood. Along with his partner, Brett Combs, he keeps tabs on the county’s nearly 800 sexual offenders.
Tracking the offenders is the detectives’ full-time job, and they knock on the door of each offender every few months to verify addresses. They go more often to see the predators who are convicted of more serious or repeat crimes.
And they look for those who are missing from their registered addresses – statewide, the figure is 1,800 of 30,000 offenders.
Wood has been doing the job for four years, and many of the offenders know him by his first name.
“They’ll say, ‘Hey, Larry’ . . . and they have my cellphone number.”
Martin and St. Lucie deputies also go door to door to check on offenders and conduct periodic sweeps. St. Lucie has a program to notify neighbors with automatic phone calls whenever an offender or predator moves into the neighborhood.
Many of the law enforcement officers also field calls from frightened neighbors who find out they live near a child molester. Calls have skyrocketed after the recent murders, Combs said.
A NEIGHBORHOOD CHANGED
Judi Villwock said the arrival of a sex offender changed everything in Hobe Hills. Her yard was once a kids’ paradise – with swings, playhouse and trampoline for her grandchildren. The children often ran through her back yard to their parents’ house less than 100 yards away.
Now, the sex offender’s new house is going up 12 feet from her lot line. Parents don’t walk their children down to her cul-de-sac anymore. They jump when they hear the ice maker at night.
Villwock wants more random visits from law enforcement and calls in the middle of the night. A lifelong mandatory curfew for offenders might also help, she said.
“There’s one part of me that is so hurt by all of this for my grandchildren, so scared, that I kind of just want them all thrown in jail. But that’s not realistic,” Villwock said.
Even before the murders, both north of Tampa, the Hobe Sound neighborhood was angry. Fliers with the sex offender’s picture were posted on telephone poles and near bus stops. Court records were distributed in people’s mailboxes.
The offender, Donald Banning, understands his neighbors’ revulsion, and he doesn’t expect to make friends.
The police report looks horrible, he knows. The 7-year-old daughter of a girlfriend told her baby sitter that Banning got into bed with her and made her touch his penis.
But it’s not true, Banning said. His girlfriend was upset because he was dating other women and made up the sex abuse to get back at him.
He was convicted in 1993, before the state’s offender registry, before most people used the Internet. He already had a felony record for growing marijuana and pleaded guilty to the sex crime to avoid more prison time, he said.
“If they said your face is going to be spread all over as a deviant pedophile, no, I never would have signed,” he said.
Banning met his wife about 10 years ago. They got engaged years ago but couldn’t live together under the terms of his probation. He couldn’t live with children, and she had a daughter. They married last year.
In February, Banning called a neighborhood meeting.
“Get the real story,” he wrote on a piece of plywood and posted it at the entrance to the neighborhood.
About 50 people, maybe more, showed up at his property that night. Most were angry. Some of the men got in his face and warned him he had better not come near their houses.
He said he didn’t have as much trouble at his current house in Stuart. But in Hobe Sound, he said, people have made clear he’s not wanted. He is mentioned in the same breath as John Couey, the Jessica Lunsford suspect. Clients for his tree-trimming business have gone from 50 to 2.
“When I show up to do a job, the door gets slammed in my face,” he said.
Sometime after the meeting, he called out to Villwock while she was in her yard. I know you’re terrified of me, he told her. You don’t have to be afraid.
Villwock just went back inside her house.
In reality, Banning said, he probably poses the smallest threat to children in the neighborhood. Everyone is watching him.
The real danger, he said, are those they don’t know about.
Staff writers Jim Ash, Dani Davies, Stephanie Slater and Jill Taylor contributed to this story.
Copyright 2005 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
April 24, 2005 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
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